Ricochet
by Edhla
Summary: Season One/Two AU: Moriarty's bomb does go off at the pool, and Sherlock and John wake up to find themselves in 1983, where a nineteen-year-old junior police officer named Greg Lestrade needs a bit of help with a murder case.
1. Chapter 1

_**A/N:** I promised I'd eventually write you some kind of Lestrade fic ;) This is inspired by, but not in the same universe as, the BBC series 'Life on Mars' and 'Ashes to Ashes' (and if you've seen them, you'll know why it's not in the same universe.) As such, it's not a crossover._

_The title comes from a 1983 David Bowie song of the same name. It's on Spotify and probably YouTube if you want to check it out._

_I need help with this fic! I'm not British and I was a baby in 1983. If you know someone who was alive and kicking in Britain at the time, or you ARE someone who was alive and kicking in Britain at the time, please feel free to FLOOD my inbox with reminisces about everything from politics and current events to fashion, music, social services, cars, societal attitudes, decor and mod cons. The internet and my own memory can only get me so far._

_This taking place immediately after Season One, absolutely nothing that happened or was retconned after that is considered canon, including but not limited to characters like Euros. Characterisation is all the way back in Season One, too. At this point in the TV show's canon, Sherlock and John had only known each other for two months and have just encountered Moriarty in person for the first time._

_This fic may be updated sporadically, as I'm knee-deep in writing an original crime novel for my PhD. I am eager for help with this too, so if this sounds like something you'd like to read (you don't have to critique it!) please PM me. And, needless to say, encouragement to continue this one in the form of reads, faves, follows and reviews REALLY helps. _

_Love,_

_Edhla. xx_

* * *

Sherlock might have expected the blast to be sound and fury, but John knew better. He knew that an explosion always sounded like silence; that it always looked like darkness. There was silence,

there was darkness,

and then there was nothing.

Nothing but an overcast sky.

Then came the itch of grass on his ears, the bitter smell of weeds and something jutting into his shoulder blades. Unsteadily, John sat up, looking around. He was in a child's playground: a forlorn little set of swings, not three metres away from a pile of industrial waste and a red brick wall separating it from a run of semis on that side of the street. In the other direction, the street ended in a cobblestoned cul-de-sac. On the opposite side of the street was another row of semis, broken here and there by gaps where a house had been demolished. He had no idea where he was, except for an uncomfortable feeling that he was no longer in London. A few feet away, Sherlock was also in the act of sitting up, one hand to his head.

For a long time—perhaps five minutes—the only sounds around them were ordinary suburban ones. Distant traffic. A motorbike being revved out the front of some hidden house around the corner. The subtleties of birdsong. Sherlock rested his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, taking a deep breath.

"What the hell just happened?" John finally said. "… And why do you look like that…?"

Sherlock stared at him, confused. "Why," he said, "how do I look?"

"… Different." But John could not explain why. Then it hit him: Sherlock's suit was cut differently, the lapels wider, and he was wearing a wide-set blue tie. His hair, too, might have been different, shorter over his ears, but he was in such a state of disarray that it was hard to tell. What he _didn_'_t_ seem to be was injured. How could they have been in a bomb blast at an indoor swimming pool, at midnight, just seconds ago? The memory of the standoff with Moriarty was so vivid John could almost still smell the chlorine. "Sherlock, did we just die?"

"You seem alive enough," Sherlock said, getting up and reaching out to yank John to his feet, "and I refuse to believe that hell is in Bristol."

"Bristol?"

"Yes, Bristol. Don't you recognise the spire of St. Mary Redcliffe?" He pointed to the east, over the roofs of a line of houses, and John saw a gothic church, needle-sharp, outlined against the sky.

"No," he muttered. "I don't recognise the spire of St. Mary Redcliffe." He reached out to wipe sweat off his forehead, and a flash of unfamiliar colour on his sleeve caught his attention. Looking down at himself, he saw that he was wearing a pale grey suit and a wide tie of purple and blue diamonds. He yanked at it and made a helpless little whine of confusion. "Sherlock, five minutes ago we were at a sports centre in Whitechapel with a homicidal maniac threatening us with a sniper and a bomb. Tell me what—"

"Dr. Watson!"

John turned toward the sound, coming from one of the vacant lots on the other side of the street. At the far end of it, bordering more houses, was a rotting board fence with half the panels missing and another pile of household rubbish, interspersed here and there with chickweed and tall grass growing through. Beside it, three police officers in uniform were standing around something, and one was gesturing over his shoulder to him.

"I need to find out what's going on," Sherlock said, beginning to back away. "I'll find you later."

"Wait, what—"

"I'll find you."

"Sherlock, don't—"

The policeman across the street called John again, just as Sherlock darted off in the direction of the corner.

_"Sherlock!_" John called again. But after taking a step, the ground rushed up to meet him and he wobbled, holding out one hand to balance himself. He'd hit his head, or been given some sort of hallucinatory drug, or _something_; he couldn't chase after Sherlock in this state. Before he could pull himself together enough to call again, Sherlock had legged it over a low brick wall at the end of the cul-de-sac and disappeared into what might have been a park beyond.

Typical.

From across the street, a bellow: "Dr. Watson, are you coming or _what?"_

Well, _was_ he coming or what? Sherlock was gone, and he couldn't stand in the middle of a child's playground in God-knew-where all day waiting for him to come back. Taking the plunge, John crossed the street toward the little group of officers, one palm to his aching neck.

He didn't know how to tell a policeman's rank by his uniform, but it was obvious that the man who had hailed him was in charge and meant business. He was middle-aged, fifty or so: a typical plodder, with great slabs of forearms and a moustache that could only be described as 'truculent'. As he turned to him, John could just make out a shiny badge on his coat and the name _Brian. _Half-glimpsed, his surname could be _Stem_ or _Stern_. The other two officers were younger, perhaps in their late thirties or early forties: one was holding his helmet under his arm and the breeze was whipping at his sandy-coloured hair; a pleasant-looking sort of person, dough-faced and mild-eyed. The other was a chinless scarecrow of a man with something about him that John was instinctively wary of. Sharp-eyed, like a reptile.

"Sorry." John glanced back across the street, still bewildered. "Where am I…?"

"Nice of you to join us," Stern—definitely _Stern_, and an Inspector, going by that badge—said, as if he hadn't heard him. He pulled a cigarette out of his coat pocket and, to John's astonishment, put it in his mouth and lit it. "We could've solved ten cases while you were pissing about. Any more from you and you'll be back in bloody Southend handing out little blue pills to clean up the clap, got that?" He pointed to the grass with his cigarette. "Couple of kids found this one. We're waiting on the SOCOs. Give us your thoughts on it, then."

It had been part of John's training in Afghanistan that soldiers who hesitated were soldiers who died. _Keep moving. Keep talking. Do something. Anything. Think about this later._

This was something he knew about. It was something he could handle, as far as handling things went. It was a crime scene, and the stinking mass Stern had just pointed to was a corpse. Or part of a corpse, anyhow. John could see pieces of a tattered, bloodstained t-shirt and a white expanse of what was probably the victim's back, framed by brambles. There was no sign of any head, arms, or legs. By the horrific smell, emanating from the torso in waves, it had been there for a long time. Perhaps a couple of weeks.

He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket—not the one he'd had in his pocket when he'd stormed out of Baker Street about a million years ago, but a tartan one which was both vaguely familiar and one he'd never seen before—and covered his nose and mouth, then stepped forward and crouched down beside the body to have a look at what they were dealing with. It was, to put it lightly, not pretty.

"Young boy," he finally said through the handkerchief, "aged between, say, fourteen and sixteen? Eighteen, at a stretch. Caucasian. Well nourished. Seems to have been in good health, but it's hard to tell when—"

"Good health? He's bloody dead," Brian said, which got a snigger out of the others. "So I'm assuming it's another victim of this weirdo we've got on the loose?"

John paused, but only for a second. "Sure," he said. "I mean… uh, the uh, the body's obviously been dumped. But I really can't tell you much more, you're going to have to wait until the SOCOs and forensic crew…" The ground beneath him seemed to heave, the world spinning off its axis. A sudden wave of nausea yanked at him, and he put one wrist against his mouth and cleared his throat.

_What the hell? I'm a bloody doctor, I've never thrown up at a crime scene!_

"Sorry," he said when he was finally able. "I feel sort of..."

He heard another snigger from the sharp-faced officer at his left shoulder and decided to ignore it.

There was something amused and triumphant in Stern's expression, too, as if a low opinion of John had just been confirmed. Not quite a smirk, but definitely on its way there. "You gonna make it through this?"

"Probably not, no," John said, seizing the possibility of being able to leave. He needed to be somewhere, _anywhere_, that wasn't here. He needed to find Sherlock. "Sorry, I just—"

"Oi," Stern said, giving a sharp whistle to someone over John's shoulder. "Pretty Boy, will you take Dr. Watson home?"

_Good, _John thought, turning around to see who it was. _Because I have no idea where 'home' even is—_

Another PC in uniform had just stepped out of a green two-door Capri parked on the kerb and was making his way over. He was very young, perhaps still in his teens. Thinner, more tanned, dark-haired, and with a certain meekness in his posture that John had never seen in him before, but there was no doubt as to who on the force they were calling 'Pretty Boy.' He stopped dead at the unexpected command, looking a little affronted. "But I just got here," he protested.

"Yes, and now you're just going. Don't blame me, blame the poor little princess who's got the vapours over here." Brian gave them both a curt wave that was two degrees away from a shove. "Off you go. I'll see you down at Central at six, Lestrade. Dr. Watson, I'll be dealing with you tomorrow. Looking forward to it."

_Keep moving. Do something. Do anything. _John blundered toward the Capri, waiting at the passenger-side door while Lestrade unlocked his own door, got in and leaned across the gearstick to unlock the passenger door. He got in, digging his fingertips into his eyes and taking a deep breath. _This is not happening. This is insane. I've died and I've gone to hell and hell is in Bristol, for some reason. _

The car around him smelled like cheap vinyl, aftershave and cigarette smoke. The source of this last one was an overflowing ashtray just below the tape deck.

"Sorry," Lestrade said, seeing his disgusted expression and guessing what it meant. "I don't usually have workmates in my car…"

"It's fine, you don't have to—"

But it was too late. Lestrade pulled the ashtray out, opened his door again, dumped the contents out onto the road, then slotted it back in its place and gave the car door a cheerful slam.

_Stern called him by name; and anyway, there's no way that's anyone else, _John thought, watching him as he took his helmet off, threw it into the back seat, and dragged his hand through his hair.

Stern's sarcastic nickname mightn't have been kind, but it was apt. The silver hair and slightly haggard, harassed look of his middle age had masculinised Greg Lestrade; without them he was almost girlish, with an oval face and long eyelashes. There was something about him that wasn't so pretty, though—John, ever a doctor, could see that below his left cheekbone was the shadow of a black eye. His left hand, resting on the gearstick, was tattered and callused, as if he worked in manual labour. He drove in silence, until John, desperately trying to think of something to say that wouldn't sound deranged, said, "Does he always talk to people like that?"

"Who?" Lestrade reached out to slap at the tape deck. It was playing something John recognised vaguely from his childhood, but didn't have the energy to try to identify. A David Bowie song… he'd bought a cassette with his pocket money when he was twelve…

"Stern," he said, taking a guess that neither he nor Lestrade would be on a first-name basis with the guy.

At this, Lestrade glanced at him. "You've been the FME on this case for, what, nearly two months, Dr. Watson," he said. "I thought you'd know what he's like by now."

_FME: Force Medical Examiner. Ongoing murder case. Right, now we're getting somewhere. _"I meant," he said, "was he like that before I got here, or is it just something he's put on specially for me?"

Lestrade shrugged as he changed lanes. Out the window, the view had become increasingly unsettling. A seemingly ordinary afternoon on the high street, with bag-laden shoppers hurrying up to parked cars and teenagers congregated on the low stone wall of a nineteenth-century church, clutching cigarettes and cans. There was something wrong with how they were dressed, with their hair—John was still too befuddled to work out what. It was only once they'd turned the corner and were back in another tree-lined suburban street that he realised something else: all those people, and he had not seen one of them with a mobile phone.

His own mobile had been confiscated, or possibly destroyed, by Moriarty earlier in the night. Only it was no longer night. It was, by the looks of things, mid-afternoon. On top of everything else, the universe had apparently decided to give him a huge dose of jetlag.

* * *

"You sure you're okay, Dr. Watson? You look like you don't even know where you are."

John took a deep breath, looking up at the Victorian semi Lestrade had just stopped in front of. He apparently lived here, in Dalrymple Street, according to the sign three houses down. The house was a deep teal colour, the street door reached by a narrow set of concrete steps.

"Dr. Watson?"

_Why's he keep calling me that? _John thought, irritated. Hardly anyone called him _Dr. Watson. _He'd even had _patients_ call him by his first name, and he'd never corrected them. "Yeah," he made himself say, doing his best to sound upbeat. "I'm fine."

"You don't want me to come in with you?"

John did, but he shook his head. The last thing he needed was for Lestrade to realise he didn't even know his own house. "It's fine," he said. "See you tomorrow?"

It was a guess at his work schedule which failed. "Doubt it, unless they find another one," Lestrade said. "You should be at the surgery, right?"

"Oh." John had the impression if he said any more, he'd get himself into trouble. "Yeah. Okay. Well, I'll see you at some point…"

With this he climbed out of the car, shutting the door and turning so that Lestrade couldn't see the look on his face. Only when the Capri had taken off and turned the corner into the next street did he start climbing those concrete steps, pulling an unfamiliar set of keys out of his pocket, hoping he'd followed Lestrade's line of sight correctly and this was the house he'd taken him to, not the one next door.

There was a line of doorbells on the right of the doorway, which was both a blessing and a disappointment—he'd been taken to a flat, not a house, but at least the one he lived in was labelled for him. The hall just inside the street door was dark and cool, smelling of floor polish. He trudged up a narrow flight of steps to the second landing, finding the door of flat D and trying each key in turn until one fitted the lock.

He expected the door to stick—this was surely not his flat, his flat was in bloody _London_, so none of these could be the right key. Instead, the lock flicked over easily, and the door opened with barely a creak, as though it was in constant use. It opened onto a dark, low-eaved sitting room, which reeked of cigarette smoke. Against the far wall was a blockish, beige-coloured sofa, and Sherlock Holmes was sitting on it, a lit cigarette in his mouth.

"Jesus!" John almost slammed the door after himself, then drew a deep breath. "You scared the hell out of me. What—"

"Oh, _I've _scared the hell out of you? This." Sherlock stood up, picking up a newspaper from the coffee table in front of him and handing it across. "Evening paper, so yesterday's, apparently." He flopped down on the sofa again, as though exhausted with the effort.

John took it, staring blankly at the headline: _Thatcher Hints at General Election_. A thin panel on the left of the front page included a colour photograph of Prince Charles, with a full head of dark hair and wearing a baby-blue polo jumper, one arm around a flop-haired, smiling Princess Diana. She held a bald, woeful-looking baby on her lap, and the headline proclaimed he was: _Our Sweet William! _John's gaze shot up to the date just above the by-line: Thursday, March 24, 1983.

"I don't know what you're playing at," he said, trying to stop the tremor in his voice, "but this isn't funny and it's got to stop."

"I'm not playing at anything," Sherlock said grimly, taking another drag of his cigarette. "And if I could stop it, I would."

"You're not seriously suggesting we've gone back in time. If this is 1983, Sherlock, I should be able to go out to Portsmouth right now and find _me_, sitting the eleven-plus at St John's and wondering whether my dad was going to kill me if I failed. But apparently I'm going to pass, or did pass, or _something_, because I'm still a doctor."

"Yes, I know," Sherlock said.

John rolled his eyes. "Of course. You know everything. _How_ did you know?"

"I found your address by looking you up in the phone directory. You're listed as Dr. J.H. Watson."

"I don't even know what station I'm supposed to be working out of. Apparently, I'm the FME for… whichever station those officers who were across the street from where we… were… work out of..." Aware that he was almost gibbering now, he took a deep breath and went to the window. The room was cold, but he pushed up the sash, letting a flood of fresh air into the room. "They all seemed to know me, but I've never seen any of them before. Except Greg Lestrade just drove me home."

Sherlock got out of his seat. "Sorry, what?"

"Lestrade."

"Yes, I know who he _is," _Sherlock said acidly. "I was commenting on what he's doing here with us."

"Yeah, that's the thing, I don't think he's here _with us_. He looks like he's not even old enough to shave yet, and he's acting like it's 1983 and nothing weird's just happened."

"Did he recognise you?"

"From the future? Of course he didn't. But he seems to think we've been working together for months, and he keeps calling me 'Dr. Watson'."

Sherlock shook his head. "It explains why we're in Bristol," he said. "Lestrade's first post was there. Here."

"So you're saying we _are_ in—"

"We're _not_ in the past, John; it's impossible. If time was linear and we were in the past, Lestrade would also have recognised you in the _future_. And as you so correctly pointed out, if we were really in 1983, we'd both currently exist in two places at once. I'd be six years old and at school in Surrey."

"So you're going along with time travel being real, but it's multiple dimensions that's tripped you up?"

"The opposite." Sherlock reached out to stub his cigarette out in the ashtray that sat on the coffee table, his hands shaking so badly that he could hardly make them accomplish the task. Then he picked up a packet of cigarettes that sat beside the ashtray, gesturing with them. "By the way, you'll be interested to know that these were sitting on the coffee table. You smoke."

"I do _not _smoke," John protested. "I've never smoked."

"Precisely. So this must be a parallel reality in which you do."

"Jesus, my head hurts." John buried his face in his hands, thinking this through. "If, Sherlock," he said through his fingers, _"if _it was 1983, or some sort of... I dunno... parallel reality... and I was picking a place to live, it wouldn't be here. Why _here?"_ He dropped his hands to his sides and looked around. The place was not a far cry from 221B Baker Street, in terms of its age, interior decoration and overall feel. Beiges, browns and oranges, with cream accents. A dingy little one-bedroom flat, occupying only part of the top floor of the building: in the far corner, the roof sloped almost down to the floor. There was a kitchenette at one end of the room, barely big enough for a stove and refrigerator, and beyond it, a half-open door that led to a green-tiled bathroom. Another door, between the sofa and the window, was closed; apparently it led to a bedroom. There was a red-shaded lamp on a stand to one side of the armchair, a record player under the window, and a tiny, curve-screened television on a wooden stand in the opposite corner. Other than this, there seemed to be very little in the room—not even a book case. Not _too_ much like Baker Street, then, with its piles of stuff strewn everywhere. Sherlock's stuff. If he lived here, John thought, where did _Sherlock _live?

"I think," Sherlock said, "you live in a place like this because you're a doctor who's just returned injured from a war." He threw a small shining object to him, and John automatically caught it. "This was on the coffee table when I came in, only a few minutes before you did. We need to search the flat."

John looked down. In his hand was a glinting service medal, sea-green stripes between two white and then two blue stripes. He felt himself drop, rather than sit, on the sofa; then he turned the medal on its side to read the initials and rank transcribed on it. "Sherlock," he said, "this is the South Atlantic Medal. It was given to British personnel who served in the Falklands."

"And it's inscribed with your initials."

"They're not my initials. I've seen this before, but it's not mine. It's my dad's."


	2. Chapter 2

There was not much of the flat to search, as it happened. Whether he was his own father, his present self, his past self or some parallel version of himself, John Watson was still neat and tidy. Under the coffee table, hidden by a tablecloth that both of them had recognised as too out of character to be meant as a decoration, was a cardboard box full of various items: The Browning, a leather-bound Bible, and discharge papers from the Royal Navy. John had been invalided out on October 13, 1982.

"Standard discharge papers," John reported, looking them over. "Apart from the dates, they haven't changed very much in a few decades." But he still sounded troubled. "And they're in my name. Dad's middle name was—is—James."

"I know."

"Will you stop doing that?"

Sherlock opened his mouth to protest, then decided to shut it again.

"Anyway, his rank was Lieutenant Commander, and he didn't have any medical training," John went on matter-of-factly. "According to this,_ mine's_ Surgeon Lieutenant, and I was an MO on the HMS _Ardent_."

"What happened to you?"

"Doesn't say. I doubt anything good, because the _Ardent_ was sunk after being bombed by Argentine aircraft. I can't remember exactly when, but I'm pretty sure it went down early in the conflict. There would have been, say, at least three or four months between the sinking and when I was formally served papers." His hand crept under the collar of his shirt, fingers moving toward his left shoulder.

"Scar?"

"Still there."

"Shame."

John glanced up. For once, he wasn't sure if Sherlock was being sarcastic or not. After a long and puzzled pause, he said, "Look, if we just went out to where my family were living in 1983 and checked—"

"—We would break the time and space continuum. So don't even think about it."

"I'm pretty sure it's broken already, Sherlock. Or at least, there's a good-sized dent in it."

But Sherlock did not respond to this. He was pacing around the room, restless, looking out the window at nothing, checking the skirting boards for nothing, covering his nose and mouth with his hands every now and again, tugging at his hair, giving the wall between the living area and the bedroom a frustrated slap that was two degrees away from a punch. After a few minutes of this, John checked his watch.

"One hour, fourteen minutes," he announced.

"Hmm?"

"You're missing your phone, aren't you? That's how long it took you to start going crazy without it. An hour and fourteen minutes."

"Oh, shut up," Sherlock snapped. "What do you think I want it for, to play FreeCell? I _need_ it. It's_ important_."

"It's useless to you anyway," John said. "Mobile towers don't exist, and neither does the internet." He got up. "Come on, we haven't finished looking."

"Oh, you seem to have gotten over yourself!"

John, to his own surprise, had. The conflicting data around him was too interesting for him to sit and worry about breaking the time and space continuum. He went into the bedroom and Sherlock, sulking, followed.

The bedroom was bigger than his at Baker Street, and better kitted out: a double bed in the centre of the room with a sturdy headboard of dark wood and a nondescript blue-grey duvet that, he thought, was more like something he'd have actually chosen for himself than anything he'd seen in the flat so far. Other than this, there was a set of bedside tables that didn't match the bed, being in a lighter walnut-coloured wood, and surmounted by a pair of flimsy lamps with cheap blue shades. The one on the far side of the room was rarely used, judging from the coating of dust on it. The other was obviously on his preferred side of the bed; along with it was a clunky grey phone. In the corner between them sat an old-fashioned Teledex. John sat down on the bed and picked it up with a comforting flash of recognition. He hadn't seen one of these in years. Sherlock, meanwhile, had gone to the wardrobe on the opposite wall and half-disappeared inside it, apparently pulling things out at random.

John ignored him. He opened the Teledex, starting at A, and worked his way through his (apparent) contacts. Almost all were Bristol numbers, and none struck him as familiar. There was one number listed under _Surgery _and, tucked in next to it, a piece of scrap paper listing five ten-hour timeslots, one each day of the week, except for Monday and Friday.

"What day is it again?" he asked vaguely, reading them through.

"Friday."

"Looks like I've got work tomorrow. I knew I couldn't be a full-time FME—they're normally on a roster, one or two days a fortnight, or else they're on call for a particular case." John got up and crouched down beside the bed to look under it, finding what he expected: a thick phone book. He yanked it out and sat down again, flicking through it to find the address of the surgery he apparently worked at.

"You look at that, then." Sherlock dumped something on the floor of the wardrobe with a heavy _thunk _and stood up, reaching for the door handle. "I'll make coffee."

John might have normally expressed more surprise at this declaration, but it had been a strange day already; and anyhow, he was busy looking through the listings for medical practices in the area. His only reply was a vague murmur.

* * *

By the time Sherlock had brought coffee in for both of them, John was writing an address down on a notepad he'd found next to the phone. "Pembroke Road," he said, reaching out for the cup Sherlock handed to him. "Wherever that is. I suppose I can just give a cab driver the address. Oh—yeah, Lestrade's info's in here, too. He's got a flat in Broad Street, apparently."

Sherlock took the Teledex, figuring out how to work it and going through the listings again. There weren't many, but one was _very _interesting. Eventually, he said, "So. 'Donna'._"_

John looked irritated. "You know I don't know who that is."

"No," Sherlock agreed, upbeat. "But all of these entries are in your handwriting, and I note you've listed no surname or address for this woman."

"So?"

"So you know her _very_ well, and there's every likelihood that she lives in this building."

"Oh, God, that's the last thing I need," John said, but his interest had been piqued, and clearly, he wasn't thinking too carefully about one Sarah Sawyer. He reached out for his coffee and sipped it again, lost in thought.

"There's one thing you haven't mentioned," Sherlock said, "if you even noticed it, which is doubtful."

"What?"

"Nothing in this flat indicates you know me at all. You don't even have my phone number or address near the phone."

"Maybe I know it by heart."

_"Do_ you know it by heart?"

"No," John had to confess. "But be fair. I don't know Harry's or Mike's or Greg's off by heart either. So what's all that mean?"

"I'm here," Sherlock said, "so I clearly _exist. _But why is there no _evidence_ of my existence? The police officers at the scene yesterday called to you by name. They gave no indication at all they'd even seen I was there. I am not easy to overlook."

"I believe you." John took another sip of his coffee. "Jesus," he muttered. "I didn't realise how terrible instant coffee was in 1983."

"For God's sake, I've already told you—"

"Sherlock, I understand the idea of time travel better than I understand the idea of parallel dimensions, so do you think you could just let me imagine it's really, truly 1983?"

Sherlock exhaled. "All right," he said. "And that's another thing. I need your help."

"Really? Could I get that in writing?"

_"John."_

"All right, fine, you need my help. About what, exactly?"

"Let's…" Sherlock took another breath, as if he were about to say something that pained him. "Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that we are in a standard time-travel dimension. This is a common scenario found in science fiction films and literature, yes?"

"Yeah."

"What happens?"

It was a moment before John understood what he was being asked. Sherlock was, as they'd established only days before, spectacularly ignorant about some things, and that included most novels, films, plays and television shows. John racked his brain for all the information on pop culture time travel available to him. Back to the Future… Doctor Who… Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure…

"To… right a wrong, usually," he finally said. "You know, or make sure something important happens, because if it doesn't, the future can't happen. But then that leads to the Grandfather Paradox..."

"Hmm?"

"Well, say you're sent back in time to kill your own grandfather when he was a baby. You can't, because if you did, you wouldn't exist to be sent back in time to do it…" John set down the coffee cup on the bedside table, judging the distance badly and nearly missing it altogether. Then his hand went to his temple. "Sorry," he said, a little thickly. "I don't know what…"

"I do," Sherlock said, unconcerned. He gave John's shoulder a light shove and he collapsed sprawling onto the mattress, slack-limbed. "Pleasant dreams." He yanked the duvet out from the mattress and threw it over him. Whatever John's skills as a doctor, he hadn't recognised the taste of Valium in his coffee.

Sherlock moved quietly around the room for a minute or two, putting various items back in the wardrobe and in a very private denial that he was monitoring John's breathing. Once he was sure he was properly under but not likely to vomit or choke, he pocketed a dozen Valium pills and put John's medical case back from where he'd pulled it from the top shelf of the wardrobe. John hadn't seen it yet, and had no idea of the amount of restricted drugs that were casually sitting inside it. 1983 was, it seemed, a very medically irresponsible year, but that suited Sherlock's purposes just fine.

* * *

Sherlock had no car, no money and no familiarity with the local transport system, but he did have a basic understanding of the geography of Bristol, so he made his way to Broad Street on foot. It was now early evening, and as he made his way through the smoke-scented streets, the street lamps came on and various businesses were pulling down their shutters and locking up for the day. He found a newspaper stand on the high street that was still open and saw, on the front page, a school portrait of a gap-toothed, red-haired boy of about fourteen and the headline _Where is Derek? _But he had no money to buy a copy, and standing there reading an unbought newspaper was going to draw attention to himself. Fishing around in his pocket, he found and lit a cigarette—he'd taken it from John's packet, being confident John wouldn't mind if he even noticed—and walked on, thinking hard.

That he and John were somehow in the same place with Lestrade—Lestrade, only thirty years younger, according to John—could not possibly be a coincidence.

The flat listed as Lestrade's was above a little shop that sold cameras and developed film, and was reached by a back entrance that had no security door and was not, it seemed, even locked after dark. The stairwell was lit with a greenish fluorescent tinge. Sherlock climbed the stairs to the third floor almost soundlessly, thought stealth was not needed: he could hear loud music even from the ground floor, a fast-paced bass beat overlaid with jangly rhythm guitars and a strangled male vocal. When he reached the landing, he found a reinforced security door with a pale yellow light shining out from underneath it and music pulsing from behind it. He knocked and waited for the sudden dip in volume and the expected, characteristic "Hang on!". Then there was a beleaguered sigh and a series of shuffles until Lestrade slid the bolt across and opened the door, peering out as his eyes adjusted to the shifting light.

Sherlock had seen, as had most of Scotland Yard, what Lestrade had looked like at nineteen: there was a framed photo on his desk of him posing between a middle-aged couple, his parents, on the day he'd first put on a uniform. But he'd been dressed up and on his best behaviour that day. Now he was wearing a grubby white t-shirt, a pair of stonewash jeans, no shoes, and had a spliff in his mouth.

"Who the hell are you?" was his easygoing greeting. He pulled the spliff from his lip and turned his head to avoid blowing smoke in his visitor's face.

_Why don't you know me? _Sherlock wanted to shout at him. _You know John! _He'd have admitted outright to how petulant and jealous this sounded if it would only net him an honest answer.

"Sherlock Holmes," was all he said, holding his hand out to shake.

Lestrade, embarrassed but polite, moved the spliff from his right hand to his left and obliged. "Okay," he said, as if agreeing that if nothing else, _this_ was the truth; nobody would be likely to make up a name like _Sherlock Holmes_. "I'm none the wiser, though."

"And you never will be," Sherlock said, in a low enough tone that Lestrade did not react. "I'm… working for the police," he finally said in a louder voice. "I'm a friend of John Watson." The word _friend _sounded strange in his mouth, and he almost repeated it to see how he liked a second taste of it.

"Oh." Lestrade scratched the back of his head. "Is he OK? He looked like sixteen shades of shit this afternoon."

"He'll recover," Sherlock said, deciding not to comment on this colourful turn of phrase. "I'm not here about John. I'm here about your latest case."

"Sorry?"

"The police found a body this afternoon. It's missed the evening papers, but it will be front-page news in the morning ones. Which means we don't have much of a head start—"

"No, seriously, who _are _you?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes. Dense as ever. He could, of course, pull out a series of deductions that were mainly deductions and some actual memories of Lestrade's background, his family, his personality, his interests. On the other hand, he could just… "I'm a consulting detective for the Metropolitan Police," he said witheringly. "And I'm currently being assaulted with the smoke from what is clearly not a cigarette. Hardly honourable behaviour for a sworn officer, now, is it?"

At this, Lestrade gave in and let Sherlock into the flat. If anything, it was smaller and even dingier than John's; a bedsit, with a single bed at one end of the room and the world's smallest kitchenette at the other. Like John's flat, it smelled strongly of damp carpet and cigarettes. Unlike John's, it was chaotic, with various objects strewn all over the sofa and the floor: takeout containers, dishes, cassette tapes, ashtrays, records and clothes. There was a pair of y-fronts slung over the foot of the bed, which Sherlock instantly decided not to take any notice of. On the back of the bathroom door hung Lestrade's police uniform, immaculately cleaned and pressed, with not a stray speck of lint on it. His helmet sat, pride of place, on a book shelf near the TV that seemed to hold mostly cassette tapes and blue-covered police training manuals. Of particular interest was the far wall between the bed and what was obviously a bathroom door. On it was a large corkboard, covered with dozens of pinned photographs, letters and press cuttings.

"I'm not high or anything," Lestrade said, glancing toward the door a little nervously, as if contemplating making a break for it. "Just had a rough day, that's all…"

"I don't work for the drugs squad." Sherlock held his hand out for the spliff, took a puff and handed it back.

"Look, I don't know how you found me, but if you're on the murder squad at Scotland Yard and someone's told you this is my case, or even that I'm _on_ the case, you've got it wrong. I'm just a bobby. I'm still on _probation."_

Sherlock pointed to the corkboard on the wall.

Lestrade followed Sherlock's gesture, scratching the back of his head again; a meek, deferential gesture that proclaimed _Oh, shucks, I'm just a nobody from Kewstoke_. His accent, too, was a lot broader than the one he would end up using as a Detective Inspector for the Metropolitan Police, vowels curling toward r's in a way they wouldn't after five years in London. "Well… doesn't hurt to have my own opinions," he mumbled, embarrassed. "I'm hoping to make detective and work for the CID one day. Maybe even Scotland Yard, if I can get there."

But Sherlock was not listening to Lestrade's career ambitions. He'd gone to the corkboard and was taking in its contents. On the lower left, Lestrade had pinned a copy of the same school portrait Sherlock had seen on the front page of the evening newspaper. Red hair, gappy teeth. The boy's eyes were white-lashed, and, though it was hard to tell from the photograph, probably a greyish green. Under the photo was a piece of paper where Lestrade had written in sharpie: _Derek Metcalfe 08/04/1968 19/10/1982 (3)?_

Sherlock said, "Talk me through these murders."


	3. Chapter 3

Lestrade took a deep breath, like a schoolboy preparing to give a speech, and stepped forward to the board. "At the moment," he said, "They're disappearances, not murders. Though I suppose the body found today changes that." He grimaced. "But the first boy to disappear was Scott Pigeon, seventeen." He pointed to a blurry photograph of a boy with longish blond hair, wearing a blue and white rugby shirt. Two boys on either side of him had been cropped out of the photo, their disembodied arms wrapped around his. "Disappeared on the fourth of April 1982—nearly a year ago now. The second victim is Colin Bedsworth, fifteen, disappeared on the eighth of June, 1982. Third victim is Derek Metcalfe, sixteen, disappeared October of 1982. Then there's the fourth victim, Keith Embley, fifteen, disappeared fourth of January this year. And now Alan Clarke, sixteen, disappeared on the twenty-second of March, 1983. Three days ago."

"You've missed one," Sherlock said.

Lestrade looked puzzled. "No I haven't."

With a sigh, Sherlock stood up and pointed to the board himself. "April, June, October, January, March," he said. "All, generally speaking, at two-month intervals—except there are no victims between the beginning of June and the end of October. Psychosexual predators get the urge to kill on the basis of a biological clock, and they either kill at regular intervals or speed up. Which means either your killer missed his August/September victim because he was otherwise detained—hospitalised, out of the area, or incarcerated—or, more likely, there's another victim, a boy who went missing in August or possibly September of last year. But nobody knows he's missing—or they're trying to hide that he's missing. He's between fourteen and seventeen years of age, Caucasian, of a working class or lower middle-class background, quite likely into street drugs, possibly into prostitution, and on the balance of probabilities, has been unofficially missing since well before last October. Tell me about the ones you know about."

"Uh." Lestrade tried to pull himself together at the unexpected information and coughed into his hand to buy himself a little time. "Scott Pigeon lived out at Filwood Park with his mother… she's a single mum. I can't remember exactly when the dad nicked off, but it's been a while, and he's been ruled out as a suspect. On the night of the third of April, 1982, Scott spent the night at a mate's house—or so he told his mother. What him and the mate, Peter Noonan, actually did was hitch-hike out to Wookey Hole, which is a distance of twenty and odd miles. There's some limestone caves down that way that teenagers use to, you know, have parties out the way of their parents. There were twenty-two others there that night—the detectives have interviewed them all—none of them said anything memorable happened during the night, but if you ask me, I don't think they'd remember if they witnessed the Second Coming. Next day, Scott and Peter were trying to get home and not having any luck. They walked to Wells—it's two miles or so—but couldn't get anyone to let both of them in the car, so finally, Peter got a lift from a woman who was at the Esso service station in Chamberlain Street and left Scott there to try his luck. He says he didn't expect anything would happen—Scott was nearly eighteen, and it was broad daylight on a Sunday. But he never got home. His mum reported him missing shortly before midnight that night."

"Did the woman who gave Peter a lift actually see Scott?"

"Yes. She confirmed the two had hugged goodbye and Scott was alive and well at half-past eleven on Sunday morning. After that? Radio silence. Nobody saw him. Nobody heard from him."

"Wells is quite a distance from here. Why are the police in Bristol working this case?"

"Because of the next boy. Colin Bedsworth." Lestrade pointed to another photograph, poorer in quality than the one of Scott Pigeon, as if it had been cut out of a newspaper. A boy, much younger than Scott Pigeon, sitting on a floral sofa with a bald, chubby baby on his lap. His dark, shaggy hair hung in his eyes and his twig-like, bare legs seemed too fragile for even a baby to safely sit on. "Lived in Bishopsworth. On the eighth of June, 1982, which was a Tuesday, Colin left his house in Whitchurch Road for school as usual—Bedminster Down—but he meant to bunk off and never arrived there. We don't know where he was all morning, but a copper saw him at a fish and chip shop on St George's Road around midday and told him to get back to school. He didn't, and nobody's seen him since."

Sherlock got up and stood beside Lestrade, examining a map of Bristol he'd tacked in the centre of the boy's pictures. He'd marked each boy's initials in various places on it in his familiar print, neat but inelegant. "The parents say he's no angel, but he's never been in any serious trouble and there's no way he'd just run away," he said. "Didn't take anything except what he'd need for school that day. Scott Pigeon _might_ have decided to clear out because he'd had enough of living with his mum, but this poor kid's fourteen, Mr. Holmes."

"Mr. Holmes is my brother," Sherlock said tersely, ignoring Lestrade's helpless flail at the idea of having to address anyone as _Sherlock. _"Was Colin with anyone when the officer saw him?"

"He said he couldn't be sure, but as far as he could see, not a soul. Which is pretty… well, look, if I was going to bunk off school, I'd at least do it with my mates. If I had to wander around all day on my own, dodging coppers and the mums of other kids I know, I may as well go to school, right?"

Sherlock shrugged. He'd never 'bunked off' school in his life. "So he probably _was_ with someone. Someone who didn't want to be seen."

"A kid?"

"No, an adult. The next boy."

"Derek Metcalfe." Lestrade tapped the photograph now adorning the front page of the evening newspapers. "First time anyone in town really heard about the boys going missing and decided they gave a…" He trailed off, clearing his throat. "His father's Richard Metcalfe."

Sherlock gave him a blank look.

"Oh, right, you're from London," Lestrade reminded himself. "Local TV presenter, reads the six o'clock news, so everyone knows his face. On October 14, 1982, Derek Metcalfe and a mate were kicking a ball around the sports grounds here at Whitchurch." His sleeve brushed briefly against Sherlock's as he pointed to the place on the map. "At four o'clock, the mate's mum picked him up in the car, and he left Derek there to walk home. It's only four cross-streets. He never got there. Some witnesses living along his route home thought they might have heard a scuffle and a few shouts at around twenty past four, but they thought it was kids mucking about and weren't really paying attention. But get this: that mate of his who left him there? Jeff Noonan. Brother of Peter Noonan, the last person to see Scott Pigeon alive."

"I assume both Noonan brothers were extensively questioned?"

"The detectives have had them in five times, or so they tell me. Both had rock solid alibis—Jeff's mum confirmed that she picked him up and she had Peter and another son, nine-year-old Colin, in the car with her when she did. They all independently verified the time—the four o'clock sports update was on the car radio. Peter had a four-fifteen doctor's appointment, and the surgery confirmed that Sheila Noonan showed up for it on time, with all three boys, acting like nothing was wrong."

Sherlock mulled all this over in silence. "How do you feel about coincidences?"

"I think they're bollocks," Lestrade said. "This one is, anyway. The Noonan boys knew Derek from primary school, but it's not like they're all the one social group. And look how close they lived to one another—the greatest distance between their houses is the fifteen-minute drive from Bishopsworth to Whitchurch. But the Noonan boys have perfect alibis, so what am I to do with that? Anyway, it seems pretty obvious that Derek was abducted by force. Why would he accept a lift instead of walking when he was only five minutes from home? Then there's the ruckus the witnesses heard. I'd put it down to a random snatch, but come on, the Noonans were _just there._ And Derek was a big, strong teenager. If you were going to take a risk and randomly snatch someone in public, you'd snatch a kid."

"This killer has no use for young children. Nobody's sent out any ransom notes?"

"Oh, yeah, the detectives have had loads of those. All followed up and found to be hoaxes."

"You seem to know an incredible amount about this case for a uniformed constable still on probation."

Lestrade gave a wry smile. "Friend on the force. Friend in the detective quad, anyway. Neil doesn't tell me everything—just enough to keep me interested."

"Keith Embley," Sherlock said, all business. "Similar circumstances?"

"Fifteen years old. Good kid with four brothers and sisters, left a birthday party in Wharncliffe Gardens, Hengrove, at around eleven p.m. on the fourth of January. Four separate witnesses saw him walking along adjacent Fortfield Road on his way back home, the latest at about twenty past eleven, and he was alone in all four sightings. Then nothing. No news, no sightings."

"Connection with the Noonan brothers?"

"Went to school with them. According to everyone, teachers and all, the boys barely had a nodding acquaintance and certainly weren't friends, but come on. And that party he went to was about ten minutes' walk from the Noonans' house."

"Do the Noonans have alibis for the night of the disappearance?"

"They weren't at the party. Both were in bed asleep by eleven, if you believe them and their parents."

"Do you believe them?"

"I've never met any of them, so I've got no reason to doubt. But who'd know? What, do their parents watch them sleep?" Lestrade wandered over to a small cupboard on one side of the kitchenette and opened it. "You want a drink?"

"No," Sherlock said absently, "And neither do you."

A blink. "Don't I?"

"You opened a cupboard, not the fridge. Hard spirits on a weeknight?"

Lestrade shut the cupboard, a little more aggressively than necessary, and went instead to a tiny bar fridge, pulling out two cans of cola. He handed one to Sherlock, who accepted it but did not open it. Lestrade opened his and took a long pull on it. "Anyway," he said finally, "the most recent victim is Alan Clarke."

"The boy you know."

Lestrade did a double take. "Sorry?"

"You tried to fortify yourself with alcohol before you told me about him. I do notice these things." Sherlock remembered, with a little bitterness, how John had accused him of not caring about the victims of crime. Well, perhaps that was true. It was also true that caring about them wouldn't help him save them. But recognising when _other people_ cared about them… perhaps that had its uses. "How do you know him?"

Lestrade dropped his shoulders. "He's from my part of the world," he said. "Worlebury, out west. And he was visiting here with his sister, okay?"

"His sister, who you happen to be taking out?"

"Yeah. Don't start on me. Julie's bloody hysterical."

"I can imagine. Where is she currently having hysterics?"

"The Bristol Grand Hotel. Her parents got here yesterday morning—"

"Unless the parents are also missing, I don't think they factor into the case. How did _Alan_ disappear?"

"The usual pattern. He and Julie arrived here by train on Sunday night, the twentieth. I went to pick them up. They were staying around the corner at a hotel called Doolan's."

"Obviously unsuitable for her more discerning parents. Alan wasn't required at school?"

"He doesn't go. Left at Christmas with no qualifications. Julie's training to be a legal secretary, but she got a fortnight off—"

"Julie is not missing, so her occupation is unlikely to be relevant to the case."

Lestrade, put in check again, almost visibly bit his tongue, then took hold of his patience and started again. "Sunday night was fine, no problems," he said. "I was at work Monday, and Julie and Alan went sightseeing together. Tuesday was my day off, and me and Julie were…" He coughed into his hand. "We wanted to spend some time alone. So I gave Alan ten quid and he went into the city for the day—it's Julie's birthday next week, he said something about going to find something for a present. He left here, right here, around half-past twelve in the afternoon. We were supposed to meet at Barker's, this cafe thing in Corn Street, for dinner at a bit past five. He never showed up."

Sherlock opened his mouth to ask the usual questions: _Did he call anyone? Did he withdraw money anywhere? Have you checked CCTV?_—but, remembering, nearly bellowed in frustrated rage. Some Bristol businesses were fitted with CCTV in 1983, perhaps; but the public streets almost certainly were not. Lestrade had given the boy cash, and he'd likely added that ten pounds to cash he was already carrying. Trying to work out where Alan Clarke had gone in the four hours and thirty minutes between when he'd last been seen and when he had been noticed missing was going to be harder than finding an honest man at Whitehall.

Speaking of Whitehall…

But no. Mycroft could be of no help. In 1983, the real 1983, he'd been sixteen years old and in his last year at a public school in Durham.

"Alan didn't know the other boys," Lestrade said. "How could he? He'd only just got here. He certainly didn't know the Noonans. Look, I might be new, but I'm not an idiot. If I want to find the other boys, I start with the Noonans. But where do I even start trying to find Alan?"

"You start with me," Sherlock found himself saying. "I'll find him. And the others."

If he was expecting this offer to be greeted with rapture, he was disappointed. Lestrade looked at him blankly for a moment, then coughed and ran one hand through his hair. "Mr. Holmes—um. Sherlock," he said, "I don't mean to be rude about this, 'cause it's a generous offer you just made, but I don't even know you."

"No, but I know _you."_

Lestrade raised one eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"I know you're nineteen years old and come from a moderately prosperous working-class family," Sherlock said. "Your father is a recently-retired builder, dealing primarily in brickwork and carpentry, and he's nearly seventy years old—there's a significant age difference between he and your mother, and you were _her _late baby, born ten and eight years after two daughters. I know there's been a lot of recent conflict between both you and your father, who thinks you'd be better suited to blue-collar work than aspiring to be a detective, and you and your prospective father-in-law, who thinks you're not going to amount to much; certainly not enough to be the father of his grandchildren. I know you played football at school and you're a Liverpool supporter, an alliance inherited from a maternal uncle; that you play a bit of guitar but you're terrible at it; that you haven't read a novel since your A-levels, that you're an accomplished poker player, and that your left-hand, bottom wisdom tooth has come in sideways and has been giving you intermittent agony for the past six months, but you won't get it seen to because you're terrified of dentists and don't want anyone to know. Am I making an impression yet, Lestrade?"

For the next seven seconds, there was silence so profound that Sherlock could hear the click of heels from passersby in the street outside.

"You've been talking to Julie," Lestrade said.

"No. Think. _Why_ haven't I been talking to Julie?"

Lestrade, obligingly, thought. "Because," he said eventually, "She doesn't know about the dentist thing?"

"Oh, I rather think she does, though you've never told her. A man's insecurities are usually clear to the woman who loves him. Rather, she doesn't know your father thinks your goal in life should be to take over his trade and marry someone he would probably describe as a 'nice girl.'"

"Hey—"

"You do have some potential," Sherlock said, honestly under the impression that this was some kind of compliment. "But not enough to find Alan Clarke on your own. And you're not going to get any help from the Avon and Somerset Constabulary. Now, Probationary Constable Lestrade, do you want _my_ help or not?"

Lestrade turned back to the corkboard, looking over the material he'd collected there, eyes darting from one photograph to another. Finally he cleared his throat. "Okay," he said. "Okay. But listen, could you just tell me how you knew all that?"

"I didn't know it. I observed it." Though this was, Sherlock admitted to himself, only half the truth. He'd been matching several _facts_, learned and then promptly deleted from his hard drive, with observations, some of which he might otherwise have had more trouble with. "And I'll tell you how I observed it tomorrow. I'll meet you here at nine o'clock."

"I've got work at—"

"No, you're far too ill to go to work tomorrow."

"Am I?"

"Unless your superior officers will be happy for us to interview Peter and Jeff Noonan with their blessings, you're going to have to be."

* * *

Sherlock walked home slowly, smoking a cigarette he'd pickpocketed from Lestrade—a real cigarette this time, pure tobacco—and thinking deeply. It was not a coincidence that he and John were here with Lestrade in what was, apparently, some version of 1983. And he was becoming increasingly sure it was not a coincidence either that Lestrade had a case. A case he had a very good chance of cracking open, with Sherlock Holmes in his court. The only problem was that Sherlock could not see anything particularly unique or interesting about the case. Standard sex murderer: the boys had been abducted by a pederast and were likely all dead. More annoyingly, he could not see any connection between Lestrade's case with what had happened only last night at an indoor pool in Whitechapel.

When he arrived back at John's flat, he went into the bedroom to check on John and found him still in a deep sleep, though the duvet he'd thrown over him had slid onto the floor. The room was freezing, almost as cold in as out; no central heating. Sherlock pulled the duvet over him again and went back out to the sitting room. It was the first time since arriving in Bristol that he paid the slightest bit of attention to his clothes; his coat still covered all, thank God, but his suit was blocky and uncomfortable, and he had nothing else to change into. Of course, he thought bitterly. He apparently did not exist now. Was he just supposed to wear the same thing indefinitely?

He'd deal with that tomorrow.

He took his shoes and coat off and lay down on the sofa, willing a few hours of sleep to come.

* * *

_**A/N:** As per my personal canon, and not contradicting anything we saw in Season 1, in this story there are ten years between Mycroft and Sherlock, and Euros doesn't exist. That Mycroft went to school in Durham is my only explanation as to how on earth he has a slight Northern accent when saying some words (e.g. 'one'), and Sherlock does not ;)_

_As always, your sitting down and reading this has been incredibly appreciated, and all faves, follows and reviews make my heart sing._


	4. Chapter 4

It was dawn when Sherlock woke, finding himself staring at the damp-stained ceiling and wondering, for far longer than he felt comfortable with, where he was. He sat up reluctantly, head spinning a moment, and looked around. John's bedroom door was now open. The bathroom door was closed, and from behind it, he could hear the shower running.

He got up, going over to the kitchenette and looking around for coffee. The only thing that seemed to come close to it was a cannister of decidedly dodgy-looking instant roast, but it would have to do. He filled the kettle from the tap, then set about searching around the cupboards for something resembling food. This search was not so successful. Apart from a variety of condiments, there was little more food in the house than half a loaf of bread, well on its way to becoming stale, and a few scraps of butter, still nestled in the waxed paper it had been bought in. Decidedly unappetising—he had his doubts as to whether even John, notoriously unpicky with what he ate, would try it. He had both cups of coffee prepared by the time John emerged from the bathroom, dressed and drying his hair with a towel.

"Sherlock," he said in a conversational way, "I apparently just slept for fourteen hours. What the hell did you give me last night?"

Sherlock found himself hesitating, which didn't happen often. "Well," he said, glancing over at the bedroom doorway, "What you need to understand about that is—"

"Jesus," John muttered. "Come on. What?"

"Valium…"

_"Valium?_ Wh—"

"Your medical case was full of it. In the top shelf of your wardrobe."

John was staring at him in disbelief. "What the hell did you drug me for?"

Sherlock shrugged, as if it didn't matter. "Because I had to see Lestrade," he said, "and I had to see him alone."

John clenched his jaw, obviously struggling to keep hold of his temper. "What, and you couldn't just ask me to stay here and do a bit more digging while you did it?"

"No. I couldn't have you 'digging', as you so poetically put it, without me."

"Sherlock, you can't just switch me off when you're not around! A dose that knocked me out cold for _fourteen hours—"_

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Please," he said. "I think we've established that I have _some_ expert experience when it comes to calculating safe drug dosages."

"Yeah, see, that's the difference between a drug addict and a doctor. Both of them might think they know the correct way to knock someone out with a tranquilliser, but the doctor's not stupid enough to do it. You could have killed me—"

"You seem alive and well enough to me."

"No thanks to you. This is why I can't even spend time in my own bloody flat—"

"And if it weren't for that," Sherlock said snippily, "You would probably have been sitting right in front of the windows at Baker Street when Moriarty's first bomb went off the other night—" He stopped.

After what felt like five minutes, and was probably five seconds, John ventured, "Sherlock? You okay?"

Sherlock swiped his hand over his mouth, thinking hard. _If he hadn't left the flat in a huff, where would John have been when Moriarty's bomb went off across the street the other night?_

"Sherlock?"

_Where would he have been if he'd left the flat twenty seconds later?_

"Sherlock, come on, don't do this."

Sherlock shook himself out of it. After all, imagining a scenario where John had been at the front door of Baker Street when the flat twenty feet away had exploded was not useful, because it had never happened. "Um, yes, fine," he said.

"You've just had a thought. What was it?"

"I can't tell you yet."

"Sherlock—"

"Let me develop it."

John paused for a long time, but seeing Sherlock was inexorable, he finally gave in. "I have work this morning," he said tiredly, running one hand over his face. "Not that I can think straight after all that. This'll be interesting: spending all day pretending I know my colleagues and long-term patients."

"You're a war veteran. Blame any lapses of concentration on PTSD."

"I'd prefer not to, if I can avoid it. I'll end up in a loony bin somewhere—they still had them in 1983. What are you doing today?"

"Lestrade and I are going to interview Peter and Jeff Noonan, two boys connected with the case you saw yesterday. Five teenage boys have disappeared. The corpse you found yesterday afternoon is one of them, probably that of a boy named Derek Metcalfe. Pick up a newspaper before you get to work."

"I'll try," John muttered. "Listen, Sherlock. I'm serious. You don't just drug me when you want me out of the way. You either tell me to stay out of it, or better yet, you _let me in._ Is any of this getting through?"

"I need some money," Sherlock said. "I need clothes."

With a sigh, John went to his wallet and looked through it. "Here's ten pounds," he said, handing a pair of notes over. "I need the rest for a cab to work, sorry. I'll have to get cash on my lunch break or something... assuming I still remember how to fill out a withdrawal slip."

* * *

After John left for work, Sherlock took a shower and arranged his clothes as best he could. Taking the money, the flat keys and some more of John's cigarettes, he made his way back to the Broad Street flat on foot. Lestrade met him at the door, wearing a V-necked grey jumper and pale brown tie over a white striped dress shirt and a pair of grey trousers, the ensemble giving him the look of an oversized schoolboy about to head onto a cricket pitch.

"Sorry," he said, by way of an opener, "But can you get me back here by twelve? I start work at one, and I really need to actually go. I can't get by without a paycheque."

By this time, Sherlock had noticed that Greg Lestrade was not the only person in his flat. A girl in her late teens was sitting on the bed, wearing high-waisted blue jeans and an oversized orange shirt that slipped off her shoulders. Her hair was blonde and fluffy, her eyes blue, her mouth hanging open slightly, which gave her the disarming look of a helpless ingenue. Even Sherlock now understood, in his disinterested way, why Greg Lestrade had married Julie Clarke. It hadn't been one of his wisest decisions. After two decades married to a man who was rarely physically home and even more rarely mentally home, she had embarked on a series of affairs and had, to date, kicked her husband out three times in the last twelve months. Lestrade was forever trying to 'patch things up', and Sherlock had honestly wondered, on more than one occasion, why on earth he bothered.

"Oh, sorry," Lestrade said. "Julie, this is Sherlock." Again, that wince at his name. "Sherlock, Julie."

Julie got up and shook Sherlock's hand, then gave a violent sob.

"We'll find him," Lestrade said, giving her shoulder a warm pat. "Maybe go back and see what the real police are up to this morning, right? Neil will give you a hand."

"Who's Neil?" Sherlock asked, in much less emotional tones.

"Neil Findlay," Lestrade explained over one shoulder, since Julie was now sniffling into the other one. "A mate of mine. One of the detectives working the…" He stopped himself before he could blurt out _working the murder case._

* * *

Sherlock was least comfortable with female persons while they were crying, and was more than relieved when Lestrade finally put Julie in a cab back to her parents' and watched it off to the street corner. Only then did he attempt to bring up the subject of the Noonans. "I assume they know we're on our way," he said.

"Called them this morning." Lestrade was looking uncomfortable. "I might've told them a few lies about my status on the case, though. God help me if we get caught."

Lestrade was really in a difficult position, Sherlock thought. Without his uniform, as now, he was a nobody, and who would tell information to a nobody? In his uniform he represented the local police, something he had no authority to do on this case. He suddenly wished he'd brought John with him—John knew how having an official profession worked and he knew how to navigate difficult social interactions.

They left the flat in Lestrade's car and arrived at the Noonan house half an hour later, a detached house with a leafless willow in the front yard and a stained-glass panelled door. At Lestrade's knock, a frowsy, fortyish woman opened the door.

"Hello," she said, and her voice was warm and friendly. A large wet patch on her knitted peach shirt gave away that she'd just come from a full kitchen sink.

"Constable Lestrade," Greg said, reaching out to shake hands politely. "We spoke on the phone this morning?"

"Oh, yes," she said. She gave her frizzy, greying hair an ineffectual swipe, then glanced down in despair as she noticed the suds on her clothes. "Come in. Who's your…?"

"Colleague," Lestrade said, without skipping a beat, as they entered a front foyer cluttered with the detritus of teenage boys: bicycles, hockey stick, muddied trainers in a pile by the welcome mat. "Sherlock Holmes. He's a consulting detective for the Metropolitan Police. More of a freelancer in this case."

Sheila Noonan took all this philosophically. "Okay," she said, indicating an archway off the foyer. "Peter's just through here."

"And Jeff?"

"Outside, kicking a ball around. Do you want me to bring him in?"

Lestrade appeared to be considering it before he said, "Not yet. Maybe it's best if we talk to each on their own for now."

She led them through to the sitting room, where a young man was perched on the piano stool, though the upright piano it belonged to was closed and silent. Knowing in advance that Peter Noonan was seventeen, Sherlock had expected gangly awkwardness, but the boy could easily have passed for Lestrade's age. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with oddly soft, golden-brown hair that nearly reached his shoulders, and which had been cut into something bordering on a mullet at the front. Sherlock glanced down at the boy's hands. Slender and white. He was not used to manual labour… but then, of course, it was also the end of winter.

"Peter, hi," Lestrade said, shaking his hand. "I'm Greg Lestrade, from the CID. This is my colleague, Sherlock Holmes."

Sherlock, after a second's hesitation, shook Peter's hand also. Not out of politeness: you could tell a lot about a suspect, or a witness, or anybody, really, from their handshake. How firm? Hands warm or cold, clammy or dry? Judging from Peter Noonan's handshake, there was nothing on his conscience, but that didn't mean much. There was nothing much on the conscience of a psychopath at the best of times.

_It should take one to know one,_ Sherlock thought bitterly, remembering again John's accusations over Moriarty's hostages. As much as he did not want to admit it, his thoughts kept returning to it. Perhaps it was important.

"Hi," Peter said, in a voice that was well past being broken. He was, however, soft-spoken, given his appearance. "Can Mum stay?"

"Yep." Lestrade started to look around for somewhere to sit, and Mrs Noonan directed him into an armchair. Peter sat in the opposite one, and Sherlock, not quite sure what to do, remained standing in the doorway, hands behind his back.

"Peter," Lestrade said, "Have you seen the papers today?"

After a pause, Peter nodded silently.

"Okay." Lestrade echoed his nod. "Not good news, I think we can say that. You're not in trouble, but we think maybe the same person who took Derek Metcalfe also took Scott Pigeon and the others. And we really think you and Jeff can help us find them."

"I already told the police," Peter said, a whine creeping into his voice. He made eye contact with his mother, who started, as if she was about to get up and call the interview to an end. "I told the police everything I knew..."

"Everything?" Lestrade was smiling, a slight tease in his voice. "Mate, if you can remember every single thing about the night you went out with Scott, they need your help at MI6, with a memory like that."

Peter looked at him sulkily. "What do you want to know?"

"Here, I'll make a bet with you." Lestrade pulled out his wallet, plucked a five-pound note from it, and put it back in his pocket. "Here's five quid. I'm going to ask you a question, and if you give me a truthful answer, I'll give it to you. If I ask you another one and you don't want to answer, if it makes you feel uncomfortable, no problem—just give it back to me and I'll try another question that might be easier to answer. Whoever's got the money by the end gets to keep it. Deal?"

Peter seemed to be giving this some thought. Finally, he nodded.

"What's your middle name, Peter?"

"Mark."

Lestrade cheerfully handed the money over. "And your favourite colour?"

"Red."

"What's your favourite football team?"

"Chelsea."

"Peter, do you know where Scott Pigeon is?"

A long pause. Then, finally, Peter handed the note back to Lestrade.


	5. Chapter 5

John sighed and leaned back in his chair. He'd arrived at the Pembroke Road clinic that morning to be informed that a Dr. Edwin Cairfax, whoever that might be, had called in sick to work. This had almost doubled his own workload. The fact that the surgery's only computer was primitive in the extreme—it was not even plugged in—and had almost nothing of use on it was another frustration. The system at the surgery he worked at with Sarah wouldn't let him prescribe any medication that conflicted with what the patient was already taking, or with any of their listed conditions, or in a dose that would cause more harm than good to them. Here, now, he was supposed to know that information by heart. A simple mistake could kill someone. In between patients, he'd been brushing up on pharmacology all morning.

Something he did know, though, was that smoking was commonly known to be bad for you even in 1983, and that most of his patients did it anyway. He'd had to prevent one young man—who already had bronchitis—from lighting up right there in his office, and the stale smell of cigarettes from people's hair and clothes hung about the little room long after they'd left it. It had also become apparent that more of his patients than he'd expected were addicted to more than cigarettes. Just now, he'd come very close to having an outright row with a dignified man of sixty—whom he'd just discovered was the current Lord Mayor of Bristol—over the small matter of a Diazepam addiction that had apparently been going unchecked for the past two years. He was just deciding whether to call his next patient in when there was a knock on the door. The secretary, a red-haired girl of seventeen that he knew only as Helen, opened it when he invited her to.

"Was that Harry Gilbert who just left?" she asked, hushed.

"Yeah." There was no point in dithering about revealing a patient's name. She was the practice secretary, after all, and in any case the girl had eyes.

"What was he in a strop about?"

"You know I can't tell you," he said mildly. Surely, even in 1983, some form of patient-doctor confidentiality law existed. In fact, he'd just told Gilbert that under no circumstances would he be handing out any more prescriptions for Diazepam; he could come and collect a day's dose from the practice every second day on the condition that he enrolled in and consistently attended a private drug rehabilitation outpatient service. John thought back to Sherlock's prevarication that morning, annoyed. Giving him Diazepam—of course Sherlock would call it _Valium_—to knock him out cold? Sherlock was lucky it hadn't killed him.

* * *

Sherlock watched Greg Lestrade give Peter Noonan the full nine yards of interrogation with something like interest. It was rather like watching an incoming tide: Lestrade would ask questions that had nothing to do with the disappearances of Alan Clarke or the others, nothing to do with the murder of Derek, interspersed with the occasional enquiry that got closer and closer to the sharp end of the matter. After a nervous half-hour passing a five-pound note between them, it emerged that Peter did not know Alan Clarke personally, but he had grave and infuriatingly vague suspicions about where he was. Sherlock was at the end of his patience, something he did not have much of at the best of times.

"Peter," he said, interrupting a question of Lestrade's about where Peter and his friends liked to hang out on the weekends, "Do you have a criminal record?"

Peter looked at his mother in alarm, and Sheila started to rise.

"He's only asking," Lestrade jumped in, "because we just want to know if there's been any… well, look. I know some of the coppers around here can be hard to deal with. I find them hard to deal with, and I work with them. They mightn't have given you a good impression of the force. And if you're not comfortable with the police, Peter, I don't blame you for not being my best friend right now."

"He hasn't got a criminal record," Sheila said, but she was aiming this at Sherlock, and with considerable venom. "Never. He's never had a thing on his record."

"No, of course he hasn't," Lestrade jumped in before Sherlock could open his mouth again. He shot Sherlock something that was close to a glare—stare-downs would become Lestrade's speciality as a detective—and continued, "And anyway, even if he did, we're not interested in that right now. I'm just looking for some missing people. That's why I need Peter and Jeff to help me." He stood up and offered Peter his hand, shaking it. "Good game," he said. He had at that point been holding the ten-pound note, since Peter had declined to answer his last question—that of whether he remembered anyone at the party at Wookie Hole the night before Scott Pigeon disappeared as being drunker than you'd expect, even for a teen bender—but he handed it over good-naturedly anyway and turned back to Sheila Noonan, who'd relaxed her shoulders and unknotted her hands. "Do you reckon we could call Jeff in now?"

Lestrade was good, so far as they went; but then, Sherlock had already known that. He also had no intention of telling him so, in this timeline or any other. But in the time they had worked together, he had seen Lestrade effectively manage frightened children and confused old ladies; blokes who were ready to punch him on sight and women who seemed more interested in a date than an interview. He was good with people. Sherlock felt it on the outskirts of his mind, but did not give in to the full thought: _I imagine that's why he's good with me._

"Peter," Sherlock said, "I have a question, before you go."

Peter, half-rising from the piano stool, looked at him, attentive and good-natured.

Sherlock asked, "Who is it that's molesting you?"

* * *

"Great," Lestrade said on the doorstep roughly forty seconds later, where they'd been shoved by Sheila Noonan. "She'll go to Brian Stern about that, just see if she won't. What the hell were you playing at, just blurting it all out like that?"

In a moment of illumination, Sherlock realised Lestrade had been on the exact same track as he was. His tidal questions had been edging nearer and nearer to the idea that someone had been abusing Peter, and quite possibly his brother too.

"Well," he said snippily, following Lestrade to where he'd parked his car, "at least we have an answer now. His reaction was a confirmation."

"And that's no good to us if the Noonans stop talking to police," Lestrade complained, opening the car door and gesturing for Sherlock to get in the other side. Sherlock noted that, true to form, Lestrade was annoyed with him but not particularly angry. It took a lot to make him angry; even more than Sherlock could manage, most of the time.

Once they were both sitting in the car, Lestrade paused to scrub both hands over his face, and Sherlock saw, rather than observed, how exhausted he really was. With his girlfriend and her parents in town and frantic about their lost Alan, it was very unlikely that he was sleeping well. It went some way to explain the spliff and the whiskey the night before.

"Did you hear it?" Sherlock asked him, trying to take his mind off that.

"Hear what?" Lestrade asked, putting his keys in the ignition and reaching for his seatbelt. "You mean, how desperate the mum was to tell you hadn't got a criminal _record_, when most people would tell you he hadn't committed a crime? Yeah. I'll put next week's pay on his being interviewed in connection to something else, and either walking away through lack of evidence or, more likely, being given an unofficial kick up the arse because of his age. But if that was for graffitiing or something, what's that got to do with anything?"

Sherlock opened his mouth to interject, then shut it again.

"What?" Lestrade asked peevishly. "You think it _does_ have something to do with it?"

Sherlock remained silent as Lestrade merged into traffic on the main road. When they'd reached the first set of red lights, Lestrade said, "Right, got you. It's not about Peter, necessarily. It's about the mum. The mum of both boys, making out like she's parenting a pair of saints. But if Alan and the others…" He swallowed. "If they've been abducted by, you know, a sicko, what's that got to do with Sheila Noonan? Women don't do that."

"Myra Hindley 'did that'."

"Her victims were younger," Lestrade countered, and Sherlock was, for a moment, impressed at his casual knowledge of the Moors Murders case. "And she was working with a bloke, and it was probably mostly his idea to start kidnapping and killing kids. She was there as the lure."

"Yes," Sherlock said. "Don't talk. I need to think. You should think, too, if you feel yourself capable."

* * *

John was finishing up his notes and about to call in the next patient on his list—an eighty-seven-year-old woman named Frances Dempsey; malaise unknown but likely to be pleurisy, from the notes Helen had provided—when he heard a commotion muffled through the two closed doors between his office and the reception area. A woman's voice, urgent and low; something that might have been a sob, then the flutter of paperwork and the creak of footsteps on the bare floorboards outside. There was a timid rap on the office door.

"Come in," he said, burning with curiosity by now.

Helen popped her head in the door. "Sorry," she said, in a cringing way that reminded John of Mrs Hudson, "But it's Donna Meade in the waiting room. Looks like the bastard's bashed her about again. Will you see her?"

John did not even glance at his list of remaining patients. Wherever and whenever he was, he still knew how to triage. "Show her in," he said.

* * *

Donna Meade turned out to be a tiny woman—as John moved past her to close the door behind them, he noted that she barely reached his shoulder—with a pale, sad face and a mop of short black curls. She was probably in her mid thirties but seemed much younger, partly because of her height and partly because she was wearing ripped stonewash jeans and an oversized purple cable-knit jumper, which gave her the look of a child dressed in her mother's clothing. She was adorned with a multitude of bangles and earrings, one of which had been ripped out of her earlobe, which was bleeding onto her shoulder. She had been wearing a lot of heavy eye makeup at one point; most of it was now smeared down her tear-stained cheeks. One of those cheeks also looked dangerously swollen, as was the eye above it. She was sobbing so incoherently that John, unable to think of anything else to do, sat her down and handed her a box of tissues in silence. Then he found an ice pack, wrapped it in a surgical bandage and handed it to her, waiting out her crying jag.

"What happened?" he finally asked her, gently moving the ice pack away from her face so that he could have a better look at her injuries.

"The usual." He felt her flinch as he shone his pen-torch at the corner of her eye, testing her reactions. There didn't seem to be any real damage to the eyeball itself, but the lid was already swelling shut. Her eyes were an odd and particularly beautiful colour, like winter smoke, and John felt a twinge of annoyance that he was rendering medical assistance to a patient, a woman he'd met about two minutes ago, and the colour of her eyes had even crossed his mind.

"Same issue?" he asked her, hoping she'd give him a bit of help.

"Michael wanted to go to London for a concert," she said. "I said no. What else was I supposed to say, John? He's fourteen!"

John saw. The 'bastard' in question was Donna's son, not her lover. He took advantage of her closed eyes to pull out her patient file and give it a quick glance. Judging from her own date of birth, she'd been all of nineteen or so when Michael had been born in 1968 or 1969, making the kid only a few years older than himself… in a way. He suddenly remembered a girl he'd gone to school with, one Allison Mason, the only kid in a grade full of sheltered middle-class professional's-kids who had 'never had a father'. There'd been all sorts of snide talk about her and about her mother's morals, or lack thereof. Last he'd heard, Allison was spiting every single one of the bastards by having a successful career as a sound editor for the BBC.

"Yeah," he finally said, realising his long delay sounded suspicious. "Yeah, I agree with you there." He had a sudden memory of his father putting his foot down and forbidding him to attend Live Aid at Wembley when he'd been fourteen himself. Live Aid, which in this world hadn't even happened yet. "Looks like he didn't just punch you this time, though."

"Oh, he did," she insisted, swiping the back of her hand across her nose, which was crusted in blood. The force of her hand triggered another dribble of blood from her nostril, and John handed her another tissue. "He had his keys in his hand, though…"

He held his hands up, appalled. _"Donna,"_ he said. "That's an escalation. You know I can't ignore that."

But apparently, before all this, some version of him had been ignoring it. This was a woman who was used to coming to him when 'the usual' happened, and he'd been so ineffective at dealing with it that it was 'the usual.'

"What's his dad have to say about all this?" he asked her. Then a momentary panic washed over him: 'Donna', someone he apparently knew so well that he had her name unadorned in his Teledex, someone who would come to him in crisis about her abusive, out-of-control teenager… _their_ abusive, out-of-control teenager? If he'd served in a war he couldn't even remember, then…

"You know Ken's long gone," she reproached him, and John felt a huge wave of relief that he'd no hand in creating this problem. "But if you find him, tell him he owes me twelve years of child support."

"Bastard," he said mildly. "Donna, you can't go home to that kind of violence. You know that, right?"

"I have to. He's a kid. _My_ kid. I can't leave him on his own, and where else is he to go?"

For a second, John considered… but no. The last thing he needed right now was playing babysitter to a violent teenager. "Where is he now?" he asked.

She scoffed. "God knows. Probably throwing a brick through a shop window somewhere."

And that, John thought, mightn't be a bad thing. If Michael did something to get the police involved, they might just intervene in his abuse of his mother in a way he couldn't.

"He'll probably survive by himself, at least until it gets dark," he said. "In the meantime, let's get you patched up, and then you can lie down in the bay in Dr. Cairfax's office. He's not in—I'll get Helen to unlock it for you. My lunch break's at half-past twelve. We'll talk more then, okay?"


	6. Chapter 6

_**A/N: **This is, like a bit of my other work, based on a real case from Australia in the 1970s. This chapter contains some post-mortem descriptions of a sexual crime against a minor, so I'll probably end up bumping this up a rating (much as I hate to lose 90% of potential readers...) Also, I'm aware of a few date/time gaffes in these chapters, which I'll iron out shortly when I get the time._

_As usual, I'm incredibly grateful you've taken time out to read my work. Thank you x_

* * *

It had only been a small thing, really, while Sherlock had been talking to Lestrade at his tiny flat the night before; but Sherlock's career was in noticing small things and holding onto them until he found out what they meant and why they were important. And as he'd stood next to Lestrade, listening to the details of his case, he had noticed that above the smell of tobacco, cannabis, whiskey and damp carpet there had been a breath of something else: chlorine.

Sherlock, stretched out on John's sofa in his bare feet and smoking a cigarette, thought this through with a troubled mind. Time had apparently stopped at the moment he'd aimed John's gun at Moriarty's bomb. He'd fully intended to pull the trigger and set it off. John had fully expected him to do it. It had been no bluff. He had a creeping feeling that it hadn't been a bluff on Moriarty's part either. The man wanted to die, but he didn't want to die in just any old way. He wanted it to be clever. He wanted it to be __fun__.

He was also, in the grand scheme of things, unlikely to be able to rip a hole in the time and space continuum on purpose, so the fact that he and John were somehow in Bristol in 1983 was therefore unlikely to be his doing. James Moriarty was a criminal mastermind and a genius, but he wasn't a god. Probably. It occurred to Sherlock that he knew almost nothing about Moriarty as a man: where he lived, what his tastes were, where he'd come from, what brand of toothpaste he used, where he bought his socks, and what had made him choose a life of crime. Mycroft had demonstrated that geniuses had no need to become criminal masterminds. They could earn ridiculous amounts of money legitimately—if you could call signing off on the purchase and sale of military weapons a legitimate business practice, and Sherlock didn't, which was part of the reason why he and Mycroft were at odds. The other part was that Mycroft was hideously smug and overbearing and interfered with everything, but Sherlock felt that he could have done with some interfering on his part this time.

Chlorine.

Barely in the atmosphere, but there, in Lestrade's flat in the middle of Bristol, with no legitimate, mundane reason for it to be there, coming off Lestrade's clothes or belongings or the carpet. Somehow, Lestrade's case—Sherlock was still convinced it was the work of a predatory pederast, boring, there was everything squalid and nothing interesting about that—was connected to the incident at the pool two nights ago. And, if John was to be believed, there might be a connection between solving Lestrade's case for him and somehow getting back to whatever Moriarty thought he was doing at the Whitechapel Sports Centre. Righting a wrong. Or making sure something vital happened to secure the future.

He'd burned his cigarette down to the filter and was just leaning over to stub it out when he heard a shuffle at the door, then the lock clicked over and John, looking half-exhausted, staggered in. He dropped, rather than put, his medical case on the first available bare area of carpet he could find.

"So you were right about Donna," he said. "Ground floor flat, first one on the left as you come in. And I think I'm sleeping with her."

Sherlock sat up, puzzled. "Sorry," he said, "You __think__ you're sleeping with her?"

"That made for an awkward lunch together. But she calls me 'John', even when I'm working, and…" He shrugged. "I don't know. I just got a feeling."

Sherlock had nothing meaningful to respond with, so he waited while John took off his jacket and hung it on the back of the chair. "She called in at the surgery because her teenage son had just beaten seven bells out of her," he continued on his way to the fridge. "I think I'll be having a word with him when he gets home. And if you're wondering: no, they're not Irish, their surname isn't Moriarty, and the kid's a few years too old to be Jim anyway."

The idea that Donna's son might be James Moriarty as a child hadn't yet occurred to Sherlock, and he was momentarily both impressed at John's having thought of it and annoyed that he hadn't thought of it first.

"So what's been happening on your side of things?" John continued, oblivious, as he pulled milk out for coffee. Unless it had materialised out of nowhere after Sherlock had left the flat, there was no more food in the fridge than there had been when he'd woken that morning. "Where's Greg?"

"At work, is my best deduction. He dropped me off before he left."

"And how much trouble have you got him in today?"

Not having an answer that didn't involve discussing the business with offending Sheila Noonan, Sherlock simply changed the subject. "I'm afraid you owe him a hundred and twenty pounds," he said.

"What? Why?"

Sherlock glanced down at himself, and to the new suit he was wearing: blockish and navy blue, loose over the shoulders and waist. "I had to borrow cash from him. I draw the line at wearing the same clothes indefinitely."

John smiled. "You look ridiculous," he said, but there was something fond in his tone.

"And you," Sherlock said acidly, "fit seamlessly into 1983 with your current, 2010 wardrobe."

"Okay, I might have deserved that," John said, putting the milk back in the fridge.

"Has it occurred to you—"

"Probably not, no." John put his coffee down on the coffee table and sank into the armchair. Sherlock noted, annoyed, that for once he hadn't made any for him as well.

"Very funny," he said. "Have you forgotten the issue at hand? __How are we here?"__

"Sherlock, if I can't work out what to make of a dead kid's shoes, I haven't a hope in working out why we've suddenly time travelled. Anyway, I don't think I even care why we're here. I just want to get back…" John trailed off as the phone in the bedroom started to ring, then got up again and went in to answer it. Sherlock waited, blatantly listening in. But there didn't seem to be much to work on on John's end, just a series of perfunctory, almost meek responses. That, in itself, was interesting. John was getting a bollocking.

"Sorry," he said, once he emerged from the bedroom again and picked up his discarded jacket. "Brian Stern wants me down at the station, I assume to discuss this body they've found. Completely forgot about it… what are you doing?"

Sherlock, who had stood up, looked puzzled. "What do you mean, what am I doing? I'm coming with you."

* * *

Central Police Station was roughly the size of a warehouse, an old Georgian building complete with square windows and Grecian columns supporting the front steps. John, after warning Sherlock to for God's sake watch what he said, alerted one of the desk sergeants that he was there and wanted to see Detective Inspector Brian Stern, which got him a puzzled look in response.

Of course. Security doors were for banks and vaults in 1983; anyone could wander into the operational section of a police station. He and Sherlock went up the stairs to the second level. Here a dozen or so police officers in uniform were milling about the place, none of whom were Lestrade; he could be anywhere, from writing a traffic ticket to breaking up a domestic. John recognised Stern, though, and one of the officers who had been with him at the crime scene, the one with the smirking, predator's face. The more kindly of the two was also nowhere to be found. Brian Stern was standing at a whiteboard at one end of the room, his goutish face green in the fluorescent light he was sitting under and in the fug of cigarette smoke that surrounded him. John met his gaze and made his way over to him. "Sorry," he said. "I'd completely forgotten. Rough day at the surgery." He wondered briefly if he was expected to call Stern _Sir._ Well, too bad if he was. Almost involuntarily, he found himself putting his hand in his pocket, closing his fingers around the medal of sea green and blue hidden there.

Stern appeared not to notice any breach of protocol. "Who's this?" he asked, pointing at Sherlock.

"My colleague," John said without hesitation. "Dr. Holmes here is a biomedical scientist working out of St. Bartholomew's in London, and he'll be assisting me with my work for the next few days." He hoped that Sherlock looked young enough to pass as a newish graduate, and that Stern already had so much to do with this breakthrough in the murder case that he wouldn't bother to send enquiries to Bart's about whether they'd ever heard of a Sherlock Holmes. The man lit up cigarettes at crime scenes and called his junior colleagues demeaning names, so it was a fair assumption that he was not particularly interested in workplace ethics.

Stern gave Sherlock a distrustful look, but as Sherlock miraculously said nothing, he simply grunted ungraciously and walked off without a word, leaving John and Sherlock to follow him until they were in the relative privacy of his office. He pointed at the door and grunted again. When Sherlock refused to, John shut it.

"Post-mortem report," Stern said, handing it over the desk to John as if it were nothing more important than a magazine. The only other people who had ever handed him such a thing were Molly Hooper and Greg Lestrade, and both of them treated that sort of paperwork with the same care they'd have given to a piece of Ming china. The Nineties had done that for medical protocol and probably police operations too, John thought as he looked over the typewritten notes in front of him.

The corpse he had partially examined when it had been discovered the day before had, indeed, been confirmed to belong to one Derek Metcalfe, aged sixteen. He had been dead for a week or ten days, and his cause of death had been a massive loss of blood from an anal injury, probably several of them repeated over time. Also present on the boy's body were a number of mutilations, including a wound cut directly into his abdomen and through into the small bowel, part of which was missing; the skin around the wound had been shaved, as if the boy had been prepared for surgery.

"Holy God," John said softly to himself. "He was a __kid..."__

"Extra incentive to catch this bastard, eh?" Stern went to his desk drawer and pulled out a packet of cigarettes, and John, still reading the particulars of the report, could not be bothered even looking annoyed about it.

"How in God's name did he end up with that much Mandrax in his system?" he asked eventually, once he'd conquered the urge to punch the nearest wall in frustration. A kid had been __drugged and tortured to death…__

"You've never prescribed it?" Stern asked him.

"God, I hope not," he muttered, finally giving in and handing the report to Sherlock so he'd stop reading it over his shoulder. Mandrax had been illegal so far back as his memory went, so he didn't know much about it except that it resembled Rohypnol in effect, and that was _why_ it was illegal. "But if it was prescription and not just bought off the street somewhere, that should make it easier to track down, right? Just find out who's prescribed it, and to who."

"Whom," Sherlock corrected him absently, reading the report.

John decided to ignore this. Instead, he waited for Sherlock to reach the boy's cause of death. He was suddenly curious, not as to what Sherlock would make of it intellectually, but how he'd react to it as the human being he presumably was. Sherlock's eyes grew wide for a second, then he made a noise of either contempt or disgust and gave John the papers again.

"So what do we make of it then?" Stern asked him, leaning back in his chair. A waft of body odour emanated from his shirt, as though it hadn't been changed in a day or two. "There's photos there as well, if you're keen."

John paused. __If you're keen?__ Was that some sort of trap? He wasn't prepared to state an opinion on anything else to do with this case unless he'd seen it for himself. He picked up a pile of 8x10 photographs of the boy Derek's injuries, comparing them with their description in the report.

"My guess is," he said finally, "The killer, or killers… ah." He rubbed his hand over his chin. "They inserted something into him, lost it, and did some… makeshift surgery to get it out again."

"Why bother with that?"

John shrugged. He wasn't fond of this subject, and wished Stern and Sherlock would get into a squabble about it with one another so they could leave him to think about something else. "Worried that whatever they used could be linked to him?" he guessed. "Whatever it was, it likely had fingerprints on it. Jesus, the poor kid. Judging from the rate of decomposition—and no indication the body was frozen or mummified—he would have been alive for months after he was kidnapped."

"Encouraging," Sherlock said. He was still reading the report.

John blinked. "Sorry, what exactly is encouraging about the kidnapping and torture of a kid?"

"He'd been missing for five months and his is the only body that's been found. He died as a result of blood loss after repeated sexually-motivated torture, which indicates the perpetrator more than likely did not intend to kill him in the first place. Therefore, we can assume the other boys are being kept alive somewhere."

"Alive and __tortured."__

Sherlock sneered.

"What?"

"Sexual assault as 'a fate worse than death'," he said. "How very Victorian of you, John."

John, unable to stand still any longer, went to the window, looking out at nothing in particular for a few seconds. "Okay," he said, when he was finally able to look at Sherlock again without the overwhelming urge to strangle him. "Okay. What I want to know is, all that…" He waved one hand vaguely at the report. "Is it going to actually help catch this guy? Or guys? If multiple boys are being held captive somewhere, I'm assuming more than one person has to be involved."

"Of course," Sherlock said. "This is all building a picture, John. We know these killers."

"Do we?"

"You just said it yourself. There are at least two people involved. Statistically, they are men, and over the age of thirty. They have access to a remote place to keep several young men alive and they have the proclivities to sexually torture them. This is an escalated crime, so they're almost certainly in the system for various other more minor abuses against children. If they really did retrieve an instrument from Derek Metcalfe's body because they were afraid of a link to themselves, they are educated and possess some modicum of common sense. And they have access to Mandrax. Couldn't be easier."

Something in Sherlock's tone made John glance sharply at him. But Sherlock was not paying him any attention at all. He was looking at Brian Stern. John couldn't be sure, but he thought it was a look of disappointment.


	7. Chapter 7

After being dismissed by Brian Stern, Sherlock and John returned to the flat, picking up groceries on the way. When the cab finally pulled up on the kerb on Dalrymple Street, John noticed a group of teenage boys sitting on a low stone wall on the other side of the street, cans in hand. One of them had a skateboard, a clunky thing that was probably harder to steer than a tank, John thought. As they got out, he heard them call jeeringly to him, or perhaps to Sherlock. Something he couldn't quite catch, but which had ended with _Fucking queers! _

He ignored it—to even acknowledge something like that was going to cause a confrontation he was in no mood for—but John felt his anxiety spike. This was no longer about people's assumptions about his sexuality scuppering his chances at dating. This was 1983, and being targeted as a _fucking queer _might well mean not only having a handful of teenagers trying to kick you to death, it might also mean the police showing up to help them. He glanced at Sherlock, but either he too was ignoring the heckling or he genuinely hadn't heard it. More likely the latter, John thought. Sherlock ignored the world around him when he was thinking hard, and he'd said nothing that wasn't 'yes' 'no' or 'fine' since they'd left Central.

He was trying to _think his way _out of a parallel universe and back into the one he belonged to. And if anyone was going to succeed at that kind of over-ambitious task, it was Sherlock Holmes.

They reached the flat, and John, knowing Sherlock was even less helpful than usual when he was deep in thought, put the groceries away without even asking him. After ten more minutes of silence he was just about to suggest they track down Lestrade for more information on the case when he heard the street door shut downstairs and the jangle of keys in the lock. He went onto the landing and looked down the stairs to where Donna Meade, still half-blinded, bruised and battered from the morning's drama, was standing at her own front door, staring at the door handle as if she expected it to bite her.

John knew that look. Donna had come home and found her flat unlocked.

Without bothering to excuse himself from Sherlock, he went softly down the stairs to intercept her. "He's got himself home, then?" he asked.

She glanced up at him, looking dazed; and, he thought, afraid. "I'm sorry," she stammered. "I don't know—"

"Go on up to my flat," he said. "A friend's in there, but don't mind him, he's… well, he probably won't talk to you. If he does, tell him to make you a cuppa." _Because I'm dying to know if he actually would. _"I'll have a word with Michael."

But Donna hung back, reluctant, biting her lip. "Don't be too… I mean, don't be too hard on him…"

"Oh, come on. I'm not going to _hurt_ him, what do you think this is?"

With that, she finally agreed to go. John watched her climb the stairs to his flat, waiting a few seconds after he heard the door close behind her. Donna's flat turned out to be a little bigger than his own, with two bedrooms, judging by the doors off the sitting room; but like himself, Donna didn't have a lot. Most of it was shabby and all of it was old. To the right of the front door the sitting room ran straight off into a kitchenette, with cupboard doors painted a thick, glossy cream colour with brown trims. A teenage boy was standing at the sink, a cup in his hand. He was both taller and seemed older than John had expected; pushing six feet, even at only fourteen. His hair was sandy, verging on ginger, but as he glanced up John saw that his eyes were the same violet-grey as his mother's.

"What the hell do you want?" he demanded, with the implied coda of _What do you want now? _John had never met Michael Meade before, but Michael obviously knew him. He had been one of the boys jeering from across the street earlier.

John pointed at him. "You," he said, quiet and clipped. "I want a word with you. What were you playing at this morning?"

Michael shrugged, taking a sip from his cup to cover his expression. "As if it's any of your business," he said.

"Yeah, you're bloody lucky I didn't make it the police's business—"

"Look, I forgot I had the keys in my fucking hand, all right?" Michael slammed the cup down on the counter with a bang. Black coffee splurted over his hand and over the countertop.

"What? No, it's _not_ all right, actually. I don't give a damn where the keys were, mate, you shouldn't have been hitting her in the first place, and if—"

John had expected the punch from the moment Michael had put the cup down—before, perhaps, Michael had even thought of doing it. He blocked it and swatted his arm away. Michael looked dazed, then tried again. John had predicted he would give up after three attempts, but after the second the boy stared at his own outstretched, stinging hand in wonder.

"That's fucking _amazing_," he finally said. "Where did you learn to do that, the Falklands?"

"Broomfield Hospital," John replied. "Where I dealt with actual criminals, not pathetic little bullies like you who think you're hard because you beat up your own mother. So don't think I'm in the least scared of you, mate. The next time you touch me, or her, I'll break both your arms."

It was a threat he would not have made before showing Michael that he could have carried it out. To his surprise, the boy just looked at him, trying to work out whether he was really capable of breaking both his arms and eventually deciding he was. John felt the absence of something in Michael's reaction, the absence of something he expected, and it took him a second to work out what it was: he'd made no protest of _You're not allowed to hit me _or _You can't do that, I'll call the police. _It was likely that he was already too involved with the police for them to take his side in a dispute with his mother's boyfriend, who worked for them; and anyway, John thought, the police weren't going to help him much even if he was a saint. It was expected, not illegal, for teenage boys to fall into line with a bit of help from the back of an older man's hand.

"You got somewhere else you can be tonight?" he asked him at last. "A mate's place, or a girlfriend's, or something?"

Michael shrugged, putting his hands in his jeans pockets and glancing down at his shoes. "Dunno," he said sulkily.

"Well you'd better know, because I'm giving you one more chance before I just kick you out onto the street. I bet it's cold out there. Think fast."

"There's… Thommo's place?"

John wondered, considering how many people this kid would probably call a 'friend', why he had only one he could crash with in an emergency, and even then it wasn't a guarantee. "Right. Who's Thommo?"

"Just a mate."

"Is he a mate with parents and a phone number?"

John waited while Michael slunk back into his room, finally emerging with a grubby scrap of paper with _Tommo _and a local number on it. Cradling the receiver between his shoulder and his ear, he held the rotary phone with one hand and dialed it with the other, keeping an eye on Michael, who was wandering aimlessly around the living room and still making an effort to look like a cool teenager and not a scolded child. There was an open packet of cigarettes near the cooker, and he retrieved one and lit it. John, seeing this for the blatant fishing for a reaction that it was, ignored it as he listened to the dial tone down the line. At length, a cheerful-sounding woman answered.

"Hi," John said, "sorry to bother you, but this is Michael Meade's… well, I'm looking after him right now." He was still watching the boy as he paced circles around the room, shoulders hunched. "This is the most demented question anyone's ever going to ask you, or at least I hope it is—do you have a kid living there he'd know as 'Thommo'?"

At this, she gave a little laugh. "My son, Rob," she said. "Why, what have the two of them got up to now?"

"Nothing… together, anyway," John said, trying to gauge this reaction. Apparently, both of them were little bastards and Thommo's mother didn't mind much if he was. "Look, I'm really sorry to bother you with no warning on a Saturday night, but would you be able to look after Michael, just for tonight? It's just that his mum's… uh. She's not in a great way to look after him right now."

"Donna? Is she okay?"

John frowned, feeling he was starting to lose control of this conversation. "Yeah," he said. "Just… had a hard day and needs to be on her own for a bit."

"I can imagine." She sighed lightly down the line. "I suppose he can stay here. Would you like me and Rob to come and get him?"

"That'd be great—I don't have a car," John said.

"Forty minutes?"

"Perfect."

As John finally hung up the line, Michael was still wandering around with his cigarette, though John's failure to acknowledge it had taken the wind out of his sails and his shoulders were sloped at a much more meek angle. "Pack a bag," John said. "Once you've done that, we'll be waiting out the front for you to be picked up."

* * *

When he'd finished humiliating Michael Meade and watched as a woman in a blue Ford Fairlane picked him up, John went upstairs to his own flat, honestly apprehensive as to what state he'd find Donna in. Had Sherlock had traumatised her for life, either with some weird experiment or a series of cutting personal observations, the way he constantly did with Molly Hooper? But he found Donna sitting in the armchair, one bare foot tucked up under the other and a hot cup in her hand. He was tempted to ask her if she'd made it herself or if Sherlock, slumped lengthways on the sofa with his feet over the arm and his hands steepled over his chest, had found some common decency from somewhere and made it for her. She turned her head to greet him as he came in.

"Gone to 'Thommo's', whoever that is," he said.

"A friend from school," she said, getting to her feet, as if she was about to leave. John glanced at Sherlock, who hadn't moved. It was something he had yet to get used to, Sherlock's barely moving or speaking for a week on end, interspersed with periods where he was manic, anywhere and everywhere, zipping around the flat like a trapped fly, talking so fast he tripped over his own words. John supposed the explanation for this lay in his drug habit—cocaine, if Lestrade had it right, and after five years of working with Sherlock he should know—but there were other explanations, and John couldn't completely write them off. One of them was that Sherlock was autistic; another that he was bipolar.

"You don't have to go," he said to Donna. "But the flat's clear if you want to. Get a good night's sleep tonight—doctor's orders."

She seemed keen to leave, for what that was worth, so he didn't press the matter. As she passed him in the doorway, though, she squeezed his hand and said 'thank you' in his ear. He stood on the landing and watched her go down to her flat, putting two feet on each step, gripping the handrail with her left hand. Tomorrow, he thought, if she wasn't much improved he was going to suggest a visit to the local A&E. At least they'd be putting in a proper police report about the issue.

Once Donna had disappeared into her flat, John went back to where Sherlock was now sitting up on the sofa, a lit cigarette in his mouth.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," John said, but it was a feeble protest. He was, he had to admit to himself, a horrible enabler when it came to Sherlock's smoking, both in this world and the one they'd come from. He should have thrown the damn packet out altogether by now…

"You were right, which is a refreshing change," Sherlock said, blowing a smoke ring toward the ceiling.

"Hmm? Right about what?"

"You're definitely sleeping with her."

Given the intimacy of her hand in his, her hot breath tickling his ear, this was no surprise. "How did you find that out? Some detail on her shoes or something?"

"I asked her."

At this, John nearly choked. "Sherlock," he said, "you can't just go around asking people if they're sleeping with each other!"

"Why not?" There was nothing sarcastic in Sherlock's gaze. "She seemed to take it well, in any case."

John scrubbed one hand down his tired face. "Okay," he muttered. It had been too busy and stressful a day to bother trying to lecture Sherlock into better social manners. "Let's not do this right now. I'm starving. What do you want for tea?" He opened the fridge and looked through the staples he'd bought earlier, with very little input from Sherlock.

Sherlock shrugged.

"I can do that thing I made last week," he offered, "chicken stir-fry, sesame and garlic?"

"Yes, fine." Sherlock waved the question away with one hand.

But once John had set rice boiling and was heating up the wok—which wasn't a wok at all, but the widest saucepan he could find in the cupboard—Sherlock got up and stood on the other side of the counter, watching him as he cut up raw chicken on one plate and arranged vegetables on another. It was a routine John already knew, and was secretly a little touched by—Sherlock, who burned toast more often than not, had always been in awe that his flatmate could cook, and watched him do it as often as he could spare the time and concentration. Once, not long after they'd moved in together, Sherlock had asked him, "Why do you do that?"

"Do what?" John had been standing over a pan of risotto at the time.

"You know… _that…_" Sherlock had pointed to the stove.

John had felt a little embarrassed then, as if he'd been caught out. "I like food," he'd explained. "Decent food, when I can get it. Can't afford take-out every night, so who else is going to cook it for me?"

And now, he thought, Sherlock apparently considered a basic stirfry as some sort of culinary miracle, and scrutinised every step of the process, though he doubted he could be bothered ever trying to do it himself when he didn't have to. After all, Mrs Hudson existed. Sherlock continued in his reverie until John handed him a piled hot bowl and fork and he returned to the sofa with them, beginning on the stir-fry before he even sat down, as though he were starving. Which, John thought, he probably was. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd seen him eating a decent meal.

He cleaned up before starting on his own dinner, the two sitting in silence, with so much to talk about that neither of them seemed able to decide what to say first and so said nothing. When John had finally washed up, he wished Sherlock good night and went to bed, barely bothering to even take his shoes and jacket off before he was out for the count.

* * *

For the longest three seconds of his life, John had no idea where he was—the room was black—and no idea what had woken him. Finally, he was able to pull himself together enough to realise where—and when—he was, and that the phone beside his bed was ringing. With an exhausting effort, he reached over and lifted the receiver. "Yeah?" he mumbled into it.

"Dr. Watson." The voice down the line was male, British and vaguely familiar, but John couldn't place it. Raspy and low, as if they were afraid of being overheard. "You're needed down at Central. Injured officer. Don't ask any more questions and don't call us."

"Sorry," John said, "who is this?"

"Just get down here will you, before they kill him?"

John sat up. "Kill _who?_ What—"

But he was speaking to a dial tone. The caller had hung up.

He got up, went out into the sitting room and turned the light on. Sherlock, who had been asleep on the sofa, sat up, squinting in its light.

"Get up," John barked at him, heading for the bathroom to splash his face to wake himself up. His limbs felt heavy, and he was so light-headed he honestly wondered if the call had been a dream—after all, it hadn't woken Sherlock, who was a light sleeper even in a comfortable bed. "We're going to the station. Both of us."

"Why?"

"Injured officer. I think I know who it is, and why they're injured."


	8. Chapter 8

They arrived at the police station some forty minutes later. It was still barely past one o'clock in the morning, though to John it felt much later, as though the sky was about to fade into morning at any moment. There were still a few Saturday night lingerers in the street—a couple of young men with gelled hair and leather jackets; a blonde girl in a thin green dress, limping along in heels that looked like instruments of torture. The front doors of the station were, curiously, unlocked; Sherlock and John went in, directly up the stairs to the squad room without being challenged until they actually got to the door. There they found an officer standing, hands folded, not-quite at attention, as though he was guarding it. John recognised him as the kind-faced officer he'd first seen when they had discovered Derek Metcalfe's body, or what was left of it.

"Go in," he said through his teeth, gaze fixed over John's shoulder at nothing in particular behind him. "Cells are through there on your left."

"What happened?" John asked him.

"Brian Stern happened."

* * *

As soon as they saw him, standing behind one of the desks in the squad room, it became obvious that something had happened to Brian Stern, too. He seemed ruffled, like a rooster who'd just got into a scrap, tie askew, thinning grey hair dishevelled; he had a handkerchief to one corner of his mouth, and his moustache was flecked with blood. "Watson," he said, and he didn't look pleased to see him. "I don't remember calling you or your _friend_ in."

John stopped. That sneer, that faint homophobic threat; not only that, it had not yet occurred to him that he was going to need to invent an excuse to be there that didn't incriminate the officer at the door. "Yeah," he said slowly, "Yeah, the um… the thing is…"

"Dr. Watson was just after some of his case notes," Sherlock finished for him, hands behind his back, as if he owned the place and was inspecting it. An easy task, John thought, for a man with an accent like Sherlock's. "I wanted to examine the photos of Metcalfe's injuries again, in case it revealed any clues—"

"Yeah, I didn't ask for your life story." Stern sat down with a little grunt of effort. "Well, you may as well know, we've got a real pain-in-the-arse prisoner in here tonight."

"Lestrade," John said. "What did you arrest him for?"

"Pretending to be a detective and interfering with an active case."

"Don't be ridiculous," Sherlock broke in sharply. John, glancing at him, saw he had an odd expression on his face; if he didn't know better, he would have thought it was guilt, bordering on remorse. Did Sherlock even have emotions like that? "I was with him yesterday morning," he went on. "We were interviewing Sheila Noonan and her sons about Metcalfe's case, and she took offence at his line of questioning—"

John was barely listening now; instead, he watched as the secure door to Stern's left opened and the sharp-featured police officer, whose name he still didn't know, emerged. He also seemed in a state of disarray, and his right hand was wrapped in a towel.

It was just possible that the insistence that Lestrade might be _killed _was an exaggeration, but the more he stood in front of Brian Stern, the more John doubted it. Stern had clearly been in some sort of fight—punched in the mouth, judging by the location and severity of his split lip—but the knuckles of his hand weren't damaged. Lestrade had probably been either kicked, stomped, or hit with an object. An object that could have been anything from a phone book to a nightstick.

"Let me into the cells," he said to Stern, cutting Sherlock off. "I'll take a look at him."

Stern raised one eyebrow. However convincing Sherlock had sounded about their quest for crime scene photos, he was clearly no longer buying it. "Will you now?"

John held in his exasperation, but barely. "Yeah, I will," he said. "I don't know what you've done to him, but I'm going to find out eventually, so you might as well save us both some time and cooperate."

"Says who? You're not going in there to nursemaid him, he's under arrest," Brian said.

"Oh, don't give me that," John said. "My job is to tend to _detainees_. Give me the bloody keys to that cell right now or you won't like what happens next—"

"Inspector Stern," Sherlock said politely, "Does Commissioner Allen know about Alfie Margent?"

Stern stared at him in silence. His eyes, normally a pale, oysterish blue, had suddenly dilated so that they were nearly black. "What?" he snapped.

"Oh, I was trying to be polite," Sherlock said, looking him over with a kind of disgusted superiority. "I'll _try_ to simplify it to your level of comprehension, but there are no guarantees: Does Commissioner Allen know you've been taking bribes from a known criminal to look the other way over the fact that his nightclub is a front for organised crime?"

* * *

The cell was dark when John unlocked and opened it, and it was hard to make anything out except that Greg Lestrade was sitting on the floor in one corner, knees up, head tilted back against the wall. That alone was cause for concern. God knew how filthy the floor of a holding cell was, and surely Greg knew it, too. The last thing he should have been keen on doing was sitting on it when there was a perfectly good bench seat beside him. Except, John thought grimly as he found the cell light and switched it on, you can't fall off a floor. The fluorescent lights flickered to life.

Lestrade's face was a mask of blood—dried dark in some places, still flowing in others. One eye was closed—it was unlikely he could open it if he'd tried—and his blue police-issue shirt had patches of dark grape-purple on it. Several of the buttons were missing, and the seam of one shoulder had been ripped. Appalled, John got down on the floor beside him, giving his shoulder a little shake. "Greg?"

"Mmm," was the response. Lestrade put his battered hand up to brush his hair off his forehead, wincing. "Yeah, calm down, 'm fine," he said, voice so thick he was almost unintelligible.

John got to his feet. "We're leaving," he said to Stern, who was watching them from the cell doorway. "And we're taking him with us."

"Which part of 'under arrest…'"

Abruptly, Sherlock rounded on him. "You have _made your point," _he snarled. "And we're leaving."

* * *

For all that Sherlock had been next to useless during most of his dealings with Brian Stern, John had to admit that he was handy at the next challenge: getting Lestrade down the twenty stairs to the front lobby and out onto the street. Only there, under the bluish street lights, was he able to have a proper look at Lestrade's injuries. Sherlock was uninterested in this; once he'd propped Lestrade against the concrete wall of the building he wandered to the corner, on the lookout for a cab.

"Okay," John said, after a minute or two's appraisal of Lestrade's face. "Have to tell you, I'm relieved. The last guy I treated who'd been punched in the face had his jaw hanging off. But you do need to go to a hospital."

"Nah," Lestrade said. He'd refused to meet his gaze, instead watching Sherlock instead as he made his way back from the corner, hands shoved into his pockets.

John had foreseen this protest. "That's not a _suggestion, _Lestrade. You have to—"

"He can't," Sherlock said, having just reached them.

John stared at him. He'd have expected Sherlock to refuse medical treatment for any injuries he might have sustained—after all, he'd been bruised and battered himself when the bomb had gone off in Baker Street a few days before, and even Mycroft hadn't been able to convince him to seek help for that. But he had no idea why Sherlock would care enough to intervene on Lestrade's behalf. "What's got into you?"

"Can I see you privately?"

Sherlock led him to the street corner and John followed, watching as Lestrade leaned, exhausted, back against the wall where they had left him. "What the hell?" he asked again, once they were out of earshot. "Are you blind? He'll probably need to be _admitted _in that state."

"And if they admit him and ask questions, he'll almost certainly lose his job, or the beatings will get worse, or the beatings will get worse and _then_ he'll lose his job," Sherlock said, as if he were trying to explain rocket science to a particularly stupid child. "Have you never been bullied?"

John had at one time, since he'd always been smaller than the other boys, but he hadn't put up with it for long. "Since when did you care so much if he's bullied?" he demanded.

"Since my life depended on his _remaining on the police force until 2010." _

For a moment, John was silent. Then he blinked. "Sorry," he said, "run that one by me again?"

"I've been thinking," Sherlock began.

"I can tell—"

"Shut up and listen to me. I've been thinking. You told me people are always thrown into parallel dimensions—time travel, if you want to call it by its inaccurate name—to right a wrong or prevent something from happening or make sure it does. We were at the point of being _blown up at that pool, _if you've forgotten."

"I haven't," John said.

"The very point, the crisis, half a second into that explosion, and suddenly we're here, assisting Lestrade with a case. A case where the outcome might well mean the difference between his staying on the police force or not."

John grappled with this. Sherlock was a genius—so much had been obvious throughout the two months they'd known each other—but now he was beginning to seriously entertain the idea that he was a mad genius instead of just an abrasive and eccentric one. "So, what," he said, "you think he's going to come save us at the sports centre?"

"One of us, anyway," Sherlock said. "You were up against the change-room stalls when the blast went off, remember? So whatever we're here for, whatever it is, we need to keep Lestrade on the force. And that's not going to happen if there are professional repercussions for tonight's events. We need to keep him away from A&E and from anyone else who might influence him to quit his job."

"That stuff," John said, "that stuff you said to Stern about Alfie Somebody. It was true?"

Sherlock nodded. "Lestrade told me once. He said Margent was the kingpin of organised crime in Bristol when he was there, and, true to form, it took him four years to find out the police were taking Margent's bribes to stay out of his business."

"Then we can just blow the whistle on that and get _Stern_ fired. And then put in prison himself."

"Yes, in a few days. In the meantime, we can't shine a spotlight on this department. We're on the verge of solving this crime, and now we have that leverage over Stern, he'll not only back away from Lestrade, he may also allow us access to any notes we ask for."

"Or he'll just send a few officers to have you beaten to a pulp as well."

"I'd like to see them try," Sherlock said, aggressively humourless about the prospect.

* * *

It was almost dawn before the three of them arrived back at John's flat—after some debate on whether it would be easier to take Lestrade back to Broad Street—and it took John's reluctant patient a good five minutes to get from the kerb into the building and up the two flights of stairs. Which, John, decided as he unlocked the door and let his companions in, turned out to be a handy diagnostic tool. If he hadn't been certain at the police station whether Lestrade had broken ribs, he was now.

"Sit down," he said, pointing to the sofa that was currently serving Sherlock for a bed.

"Can I have a smoke?" Lestrade asked him plaintively.

"Over my dead body." John was in the bedroom now, pulling his medical case off the wardrobe shelf and onto the bed. He rummaged through it, returning to the sitting room to find Lestrade exactly where he left him and Sherlock standing nearby, apparently doing nothing. "Shirt off," he said to Lestrade, trying not to snap at him. It had been one difficult aspect of going back to work at the surgery with Sarah—he was used to speaking to soldiers and other military personnel, and you didn't play nice with them the way you did with ordinary members of the public; you barked orders at them. No doubt, he thought, Lestrade had had enough of that for the time being.

Lestrade peeled his shirt off one shoulder at a time, with irritating slowness, but John did not offer to help him, and waited in silence until he'd put it aside.

"Jesus," he said, not even bothering with his bedside manner now. There were grazes and emergent bruises on both sides of Lestrade's chest, but they were laid over healing bruises of pale green and yellow. John glanced up at his face again. Difficult to see under all that blood, but he remembered that shadow of a black eye, one of the first things he'd noticed about him. "How often have they done this?" he wanted to know.

"It's fine," Lestrade said.

"I didn't ask you if it was fine. How often have they beaten the hell out of you?"

Lestrade shrugged, taking in a sharp hiss of breath as his broken ribs clunked. "Once or twice."

"What'd you get it for last time?"

"Pulled over this guy," Lestrade said, wincing as he shifted his legs into a more comfortable position, "Driving like a bat out of hell, right in front of a marked squad car—he nearly hit a car in the next lane head-on when he cut the corner. So I put the lights and sirens on and pulled him over. I was only going to give him a warning, you know, tell him it's all fun and games until he hits a kid, but then he gives me a mouthful for pulling him over. Said he was Charles Hyde. That pissed me off, so I said I didn't care if he was God, and booked him."

"Charles Hyde?" John looked up at Sherlock for help.

"Assistant Chief Commissioner's brother-in-law." Of course, Sherlock knew that. After only two days, he apparently knew every soul in Bristol.

"Oh." John looked back at Lestrade. "Yeah, that probably wasn't your best professional decision. Judging from all that we saw tonight, the whole place is as crooked as a barrel of fish hooks, so the last thing they'd want is the Assistant Chief Commissioner breathing down any necks. So why do you put up with it?"

Lestrade shrugged again, more carefully this time. "How else am I going to become a detective?" he wanted to know. "They're not going to transfer me to Scotland Yard if I whine a lot about being picked on, are they. Aren't you going to tape my ribs up?"

John, who'd been planning on doing no such thing, blinked. "You've had broken ribs before," he said. "Did Stern or whoever break them last time, over this Charles Hyde guy?"

"Don't think so. But I definitely broke two playing football, back at school."

"Times have changed since you were at school, and so's medicine," John said, going over to the fridge and opening the tiny freezer drawer, hoping for ice—none of the groceries he'd bought earlier had been frozen goods. All the same, he located an opened half-pack of freezer-burned peas, pulled them out, and yanked the tea towel off the rung of the oven to wrap the frozen bag in. "Broken ribs won't kill you, but taping them's only going to put you at risk of pneumonia, which might," he said, handing it over. "Nothing much we can really do but wait for them to heal, I'm afraid."

Lestrade shut up then, except to wince as he dutifully hugged the makeshift cold-pack to his chest. Since there was nothing more he could do in terms of first aid without raiding the surgery or insisting on the hospital, John finally sat down in the armchair. The South Atlantic Medal was sitting on the coffee table, and he briefly wondered how it had got there—last he'd been aware, it had been in his jeans pocket.

"So," he said, trying to shift the subject, "did you actually find out anything good from Sheila Noonan, or was all that a waste of time that got you beaten up as well?"

"Peter Noonan is being molested," Sherlock said, almost too quickly, as if he were relieved that they were returning to a subject he was better at that anyone else. "His brother Jeff, too. Judging from the number of missing boys from this area, I believe we're dealing with a massive pederast ring."

"You think this is that involved?" Lestrade coughed into his hand, then winced in pain. "I mean, I knew we were looking for a sicko, obviously, but you think there's a whole _ring_ of them?"

"Look at the facts," Sherlock said. "More than half a dozen boys have been abducted, and that's only the ones we know of. Who knows how many have been successfully overlooked or covered up? A lone predator wouldn't have the resources to run something so complex, especially since we know the boys aren't dying right away. Where is he taking them? He needs a place that's isolated and secure, a place which only he or his accomplices have access to, where he can't be observed coming to and from, especially if he's got the boys with him. Somewhere no-one can hear them call for help, or scream when they're—"

"All right, skip that part," John said. "So we're looking for a paedophile ring. How exactly do we go about finding one?"

Sherlock appeared to be giving this some deep thought. "There has to be a connection between the boys," he said, almost to himself.

"There isn't," Lestrade protested from the sofa. "I told you, Alan's not local and he only just _got here."_

"No," Sherlock said. "You said he got here on _Sunday_, that he and his sister spent the day shopping together, and that he went out by himself on Tuesday and vanished sometime during the day. So he had at least two days' opportunity for someone to find and target him. Perhaps he wanted to be sent out on Tuesday because of someone he encountered on Monday."

"I doubt it," Lestrade said. "He's an idiot, but he's not _that _stupid."

"That remains to be seen," Sherlock said. "His sister was with him all day on Monday, or so you say. I need to speak with her in the morning."

Lestrade hissed again. "She can't see me like this," he said. "She'll flip."

"Then she'll have to 'flip'," Sherlock said. "You're going to look bruised and battered about the face for at least a week, and we don't have that kind of time."

After a few seconds of consideration, Lestrade agreed with, "Yeah, I think we can agree Alan's life is more important than my face."

"Arguable," Sherlock said. "The good news is that I'm confident Alan is still alive, and probably the other boys, too. This killer's like a cat who plays with a mouse and is actually disappointed when it dies—"

"Sherlock, can we talk?" John glanced at Lestrade to see his reaction to being excluded, but there didn't seem to be any. He had pulled his legs up onto the sofa and was slumped over the throw pillows, one arm raised over his eyes against the overhead light.

Sherlock looked expectantly at him.

"I meant _outside."_ John wondered wearily when it was going to be safe to assume Sherlock knew basic social conventions. He did, however, follow him onto the dark stairwell without further smartarse comment, where he promptly lit a cigarette himself.

"No obvious signs of concussion," he said, when John failed to speak first.

"Sherlock, for Christ's sake, stop trying to do my job for me. I didn't come here to talk about Lestrade. It's about… what happened tonight."

Sherlock took a drag of his cigarette and waited. But again John failed to put his thoughts together for a few moments. The night still felt as though it had been a dream. In the flat below, he heard a door open and close. Donna was awake.

"That officer who was at the door when we got to the station..." he finally said.

"Neil Findlay." Sherlock ashed his cigarette onto the stairwell. "Lestrade mentioned yesterday that he had a detective friend named Neil who was feeding him information on the case. Only he would have called you for help if Lestrade was in trouble."

"Yeah," John said. "I didn't know his name, but he was there with Brian Stern and another detective when they found Derek Metcalfe's body, when we'd just got here. So he's definitely assigned to this case."

Sherlock stopped dead, the cigarette dangling from his fingers. "I see," he said. "When we went in, he told you the cells were located to your left."

John nodded. "Lestrade's acting like I've been working with him for months, and so's Brian Stern. So why would Neil Findlay, who's on the same case as me, think I didn't know my way around the police station I work at?"


End file.
